


some have died and some are alive (and others sail on sea)

by percivaljackson



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pirates of the Caribbean Fusion, F/M, Gen, you're gonna look at me and tell me elizabeth swann isn't annabeth chase? grow up doug. grow up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:08:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 27,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26961145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/percivaljackson/pseuds/percivaljackson
Summary: “Percy,” she says, exasperated. “How many times must I ask you to call me Annabeth?” Just like you always used to, she doesn’t say.“At least once more, Miss Chase,” Percy mumbles, his face open and soft despite the forced stillness of the way he stands, the antithesis of the harsh callouses Annabeth knows are on his hands. “As always.”orthe pirates of the caribbean au that has haunted me for months
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Comments: 18
Kudos: 68





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> this was inspired by That One Face that keira knightly makes in the first potc movie. you know the one.
> 
> im usually more of a 'drop a one chapter 50k' type of gal but maybe if i have to update it will motivate me to write. like i dont think it will but who knows! also i've kept this to the original series characters because that is simply easier. love u piper&hazel it isnt personal babes
> 
> **i tagged major character death but like !! people do be coming back to life in this series.**

..

At twelve years old and the youngest on board by far, it takes Annabeth only a day to find her sea legs. She wanders and explores until she knows every nook and cranny the ship has to offer, from the lower decks to the crows nest. Thankfully, she never once feels sick, unlike her father, who spends the majority of their two month voyage from England leaning over the railing, his face faintly green.

Annabeth, when no one’s watching, also hangs over the railing, but turns her face upwards towards the sun, basking in its warmth and the sea breeze across her face. It feels almost like danger, tantalizing in the way the railing cuts into her stomach, addicting in the way that she can trick herself into believing she’s the only one around for miles. In every direction is bluegreengray, stretching onwards in the fuzzy line of the horizon, and she is captivated.

She is mesmerized —enchanted.

Annabeth Chase might say that was the moment she fell in love with the sea, but she wouldn’t be entirely right.

The horizon she loves fades from view towards the end of their journey, masked by a thick fog that leaves the superstitious crew perpetually on edge. They go slowly through the water, both because of the lack of wind and because they’re unsure of what may be ahead, but it makes no difference to Annabeth. She still sticks to the railing, squinting into the haze in hopes of seeing something, anything. 

The only person who ever seems to be willing to answer her questions is Mr. Grover Underwood, who walks with a slight limp but can climb his way up to the crow’s nest faster than any other sailor. He’s usually got a grin on his face, too, and doesn’t get all shifty and anxious about there being a girl on board. If there’s no one watching, he’ll join her at the bow and tell her stories —if she has her way, they’re usually stories her father doesn’t want her to hear. 

“Cursed pirates sail these waters,” he says on an afternoon late into their journey, winking at her when she grins excitedly. “Entire crews doomed to a lifetime at sea, forever thirsty for fresh water — ”

“How does that even work?” Annabeth interrupts. “How can you be ‘doomed to sea?’ Just dock the ship.”

“Well, that’s the point of the curse, Miss Chase. They can’t.”

“Just sail until you see land and then  _ get off _ ,” Annabeth says, annoyed. “It’s not going to move when you put your foot down. No one can be banished from stepping on a beach.”

“Well, you can if you’re a  _ pirate _ ,” Mr. Underwood insists. “If you’ve done…” he trails off, looking from side to side for dramatic effect, before leaning in and whispering, “unspeakable horrors.”

Annabeth leans in, biting at her thumbnail. “Like what?” she asks, her words muffled. 

He opens his mouth to tell her, a mischievous glint in his eye, but before he can begin his story, another voice rings out:

“That’s enough, Mr. Underwood.”

Lieutenant Sloan, a tall man with beady eyes and chipped front tooth, stands a few feet behind them. He spends quite a bit of time talking at Annabeth as they wait for clearer skies —s he’d call it talking with him, except that he almost always ignores everything she says and prattles on about himself. It’s kind of like tutoring, except he never has anything interesting to say.

“Aye, Lieutenant,” Grover says, hurrying away.

“I think it’d be rather exciting to meet a pirate,” Annabeth mutters as he goes, aware she’s being petulant and is at risk of being sent below deck if her father hears her.

“Think again, Miss Chase,” The Lieutenant says in a way that somehow seems rude despite the formality. “They’re vile creatures, the lot of them. I intend to see that anyone who sails under a pirate flag or wears a pirate brand gets what he deserves.” He looks sideways at her and smiles. “A short drop and a sudden stop.” The smile stays on his face, like what he said was a joke, but Annabeth just gazes at him, thinking.

Annabeth is very good at thinking. It often unnerves the men that talk to her. She wonders if he thinks she doesn’t understand what he’s said, or if he thinks she does, and she isn’t quite sure which one is worse.

“Lieutenant Sloan,” a voice cuts in from behind them, “while I appreciate your fervor, I’m concerned about the effect this subject will have upon my daughter.” A heavy hand lands on Annabeth’s shoulder, and she follows the arm attached to it until she’s looking up into her father's face. For once, she's glad he’s butted into a conversation she’s having.

“My apologies, Captain Chase,” the Lieutenant murmurs, ducking his head and backing away. 

Annabeth is glad to see him go. “Actually,” she pipes up, turning back to look up at her father, “I find it all fascinating.”

“Yes,” her father says, sighing. “That’s what concerns me.” He strokes a hand over her hair in parting and leaves Annabeth alone at the rail again, confident that she’s no longer hearing stories of pirates and hangings and debauchery.

Annabeth turns back to the fog, slumping over and dropping her chin into her palm. For a twelve year-old, she’s cynical; perhaps she just knows more about losing a mother than any twelve year-old should. She rarely wishes for anything, since she knows wishes really don’t do any good, but Annabeth lets herself wish, just the once, that something,  _ anything _ , will save her from the utter boredom of the smelly men on this ship.

It’s then that she notices the lady’s parasol floating in the water. For a moment she isn’t sure it’s real, because it seems completely illogical. There are no women on board, and Annabeth doesn’t own a parasol. She smells the smoke next, which makes about as much sense as the parasol. She’s heard of sailors imagining things after months at sea, but she feels completely sane. It’s that fixation on the parasol that she later blames for not noticing him for so long.

The thing about Annabeth Chase is that she never remains oblivious for long. 

“Look,” she calls out, pointing. “There’s a boy in the water. Look!”

There is indeed someone, a limp figure on a large piece of splintered wood. A rowboat is lowered, four men paddling furiously until they can pull the body — a very small body — out of the churning sea.

It  _ is  _ a boy, around Annabeth’s age from the look of him. He’s dressed poorly, in a loose shirt and trousers with holes in the knees, and when he’s laid out on the deck his head knocks to the side, limp.

Annabeth pushes through the sailors surrounding him until she’s so close she could reach out and touch him, if she wanted. She could probably get away with it, too, since the entire crew’s attention is stolen as they get closer to what must’ve been the boat the boy came from, currently up in flames and sinking quickly. The fire makes it stand out against the fog, and Annabeth can feel the heat even though it must be at least a hundred feet away. She hears murmuring from the crew about merchant vessels carrying too many powder kegs as the overcrowded deck rushes about lowering rowboats into the water in order to search for other survivors. Annabeth is the only one watching when the boy’s eyes fly open, their deep green startling against the darkness of his hair, the stained deck, and his tan skin. He gasps, trying to sit up, and ends up more rolling onto his side, coughing up sea water perilously close to Annabeth’s shoes.

He stares up at her, and she looks down at him.

“You’re drooling,” Annabeth says stupidly. She winces almost immediately after, knowing her father is always telling her that she needs to be more polite and think before she speaks, instead of just blurting out the first thought that comes into her head. “What’s your name?” she asks, hoping to move on quickly.

“Percy,” the boy replies, wiping at his mouth. “Percy Jackson.”

“I’ll watch over you, Percy,” Annabeth vows, eager to have someone her age on board, especially someone as interesting as the only survivor of a fiery shipwreck. Her words must comfort him, because his head droops again, his eyelids fluttering shut. It’s only then that Annabeth sees the glint of medal around his neck. Curious, she pulls on the chain until the large medallion is in her palm, a skull and crossbones at the center of the design.

“You’re a pirate,” she breathes. Her mind flashes to Lieutenant Sloan’s cracked tooth peeking through his ugly smile and the way he said  _ a short drop and a sudden stop _ .

“Has he said anything yet?” It is, of course, because Annabeth  _ never _ gets lucky, Snaggletooth Sloan himself. 

She whirls around to face him, hiding the piece of gold behind her as subtly as possible. She’s been the youngest on board for so long, and something about Percy Jackson, something about the way he had looked up at her, makes her pause; not much makes her pause.

In just a moment, so quickly that she doesn’t even realize it’s happened, Annabeth makes a choice.

“Just his name,” she squeaks out. “Percy Jackson. That’s all I found out.”

Percy is taken below deck to rest, and it’s only when the crew begins to scurry around to their regular duties again that Annabeth dares peek at the necklace she’d nicked. It glints strangely, and something about it makes Annabeth feel vaguely uneasy, as though she’s not really supposed to have it. 

She figures it’s the feeling of having stolen something, so she pockets the medallion without much further thought. It can’t be that big of a deal to steal from a pirate, after all, especially because she did it to save him.

The thing about Percy Jackson is that he very much seems like the answer to her wish. Annabeth isn’t foolish enough to squander a gift. 

That might contribute to how she never says a word about the ship with black sails she sees disappearing into the fog. After all, she’s probably seeing things. She’s just been thinking about pirates too much, been listening to Mr. Underwood’s scary stories. That’s the reason she sees the Jolly Roger flapping in nonexistent wind, crisp for only a moment before it’s enveloped into the gray. It has to be a figment of her mind’s imagination: anything else would be illogical.

//

What Percy remembers is this:

Someone screaming. The smell of gunpowder and the clang of metal on metal. 

His mother putting a chain around his neck and throwing him overboard.

The salt. The darkness. The cold.

Blonde curls and gray eyes; being saved.

//

Annabeth hides at the top of the staircase, as she does every time Percy comes to talk to her father. It never used to be a secret; Percy never wondered how she knew all the details of the conversations he had inside the governor's mansion. She just  _ knew, _ and he knew that she knew, and he would loiter until she came thundering down the stairs and dragged him off to the kitchen or the garden or wherever she felt like that day, and there were never any secrets between them because there never needed to be.

But boys turn to men, and girls into women. Annabeth wonders where they fall in that hourglass of time. Like much of her life, Annabeth's relationship with Percy had changed once everyone else had decided that she’d grown up. Now, hunched over uncomfortably in the corset she’d been forced into, the eavesdropping feels a lot more like a secret. 

“Mr. Jackson,” her father says. “It’s good to see you again.”

Annabeth bites down on a smile as Percy responds with bland pleasantries. For a blacksmith’s apprentice, he’s relatively eloquent. He did always have a way with talking his way out of trouble; Annabeth would know, as she was usually the one getting them into it in the first place. Annabeth supposes she’s to blame for the eloquence too, at least partly, what with all the tutoring she’d been forced to have as a child and the way she used to talk his ear off about it all. It still makes her wince to think about the way she would roll her eyes when Percy asked questions about things she thought were obvious, like why there were more than one fork by dinner plates and the difference between referring to someone as Mrs. or Ms. He made her softer for so long, and so much of her aches for a time when being soft was easy.

She supposes he’s the one who rid her of it, in the end , the softness. Or maybe she rid him of his, or maybe they both rid each other of it—whatever the cause, she is no longer soft, and they no longer speak.

“The blade is folded steel,” Percy is saying when Annabeth tunes in again, pride subtle in his voice but obvious to her trained ear. “That’s gold filigree laid into the handle. Perfectly balanced. The design on the pommel reflects rank, as you requested.”

“Very impressive,” Governor Chase murmurs.

Annabeth is impressed that he’s impressed, and this time the smile takes over her face. Her father is a reserved man, and the thought that he approves of Percy makes her feel strangely warm.

“Commodore Sloan is going to be  _ very _ pleased with this,” her father continues. “Do pass on my thanks to Mr. D.”

Just as quickly as it appeared, Annabeth’s smile vanishes. One day, she hopes, everyone will catch onto the fact that it’s the apprentice who does all the amazing smithing, not the drunk whose name is on the door. Until then, she’ll just have to keep dropping Percy’s name as often as possible at those awful Officer’s Banquets her father makes her attend.

She suspects they know exactly who does the smithing, but Mr. D, with his pasty skin and blonde, matted hair is much safer than Percy Jackson. Much safer than that mestizo orphan boy with unsettlingly green eyes who frowns a little too often. Much safer. Pass along my thanks to your master,  _ boy _ . 

Annabeth’s hand drifts to the bottom edge of her corset, where she can feel the tiny bump of the knife that Percy once smithed just for her, perfectly designed to hide in a corset, in case she might ever need it. She can still see the exact curve of his smile in her head, hear the way he had said, “it’s for if you ever need to cut yourself out of that trap there. Don’t want you suffocating at fancy parties.” Annabeth couldn’t fault him for the fear, as it’s one that she frequently has herself.

It was her 16th birthday present from him, and the last time she thinks they really talked, talked the way they used to. He’d grinned at her as he explained its intended purpose, and Annabeth had shoved him as though she didn’t absolutely love it, as if it wasn’t the exact perfect gift. She’d tried to get him a new outfit for his birthday a month later, something made of the sturdy smithing fabric she knows is hard to find, but he had insisted that it was too generous and then left so quickly he might as well have vanished. 

Somewhere in that month before he turned sixteen they had stopped sneaking extra meat pies from the kitchen, stopped wasting hours of the afternoon in the gardens, stopped stealing away to that one hill that had the perfect view of the bay. Annabeth’s days, filled with etiquette classes and tutoring and piano lessons, became a lot less interesting. Even in a house as bustling as the governor’s, she began to feel truly lonely for the first time in years. 

So: she hides at the top of the stairs. 

Cocking her head, she listens for the way the heavy footsteps of her father fade as he makes his way outside to the carriage. It’s only then that she stands, takes a deep breath, and descends as gracefully as possible.

“Percy,” she says. “I thought I heard your voice.”

Percy looks up to watch her come closer, his eyes transfixed and his hands fiddling with the edge of his sleeves. He opens his mouth and then closes it again. Annabeth seizes the opportunity.

“I had a dream about you last night.” The phrase hangs between them, and Percy’s cheeks flush a light pink. “About the day we met. Do you remember?”

“How could I forget, Miss Chase?” he asks. The stiffness from his shoulders fades then, just a bit, and his mouth quirks up in the smallest smile. “It’s good to see you. You look as lovely as always.” It is a strong little smile, like Percy couldn’t have stopped it if he tried, and Annabeth can’t help but think it might be just for her.

She can’t help but think that that Jackson boy who’s always frowning has always smiled for her. 

“Percy,” she says, exasperated. “How many times must I ask you to call me Annabeth?”  _ Just like you always used to _ , she doesn’t say. 

“At least once more, Miss Chase,” Percy mumbles, his face open and soft despite the forced stillness of the way he stands, the antithesis of the harsh callouses Annabeth knows are on his hands. “As always.”

Annabeth sighs and turns her head away. It always  _ seems _ that Percy’s on the edge of saying something, but their conversations have been surface level for years now, no matter what she tries. Annabeth misses how close they used to be, and especially how much Percy used to try anything to make her laugh, no matter how ridiculous. 

For what feels like the millionth time, Annabeth curses propriety and social etiquette and the nature of aristocracy. She’s sure, if her father were standing beside them, that he would applaud Percy’s refusal as the “proper thing to do.” She’s sure, if her father were standing beside them, she’d have the overwhelming desire to stomp on his toes.

It doesn’t feel  _ proper _ , not in any sense of the word —she doesn’t think anything but laying in the grass and gorging themselves with the fresh strawberries they’ve stolen from the kitchens will ever feel  _ proper _ . It makes Annabeth’s skin crawl, but doesn’t know else she can say. Percy refuses to actually talk to her, so she walks past him to drive, uttering a “good day, Mr. Jackson.” It’s petty, maybe, but Percy drives her crazy more often than not with the  _ Miss Chase _ bullshit. She doesn’t look back as she’s helped into the carriage where her father is waiting, but she does hear the faint “good day” that he says in response. 

//

Percy watches her go with that ghost of a smile still pulling at his mouth. Eyes still locked on her retreating carriage, his hand comes up, as if to graze his fingertips against a necklace, but his throat is bare. He hasn’t worn a necklace in years.

Blinking rapidly, Percy pulls his hands behind his back. Being at the governor’s mansion is never easy for him, but Governor Chase pays for his commissions well, something Percy highly suspects has to do with a lingering fondness for the boy that was always Annabeth’s most steadfast companion. That, and probably the guilt from the conversation he had with Percy right after Annabeth’s 16th birthday, where it was made clear that Percy would only ever be a blacksmith, and all his presence was doing was hurting her future prospects.

The look in Annabeth’s eyes, piercingly gray as always, on Percy’s own birthday, had felt like a cold gust of wind. It was unnatural, brushing her off and running, even though he knows it was his only option, the only path where they could both come out marginally happy. 

The guilt is not a new feeling, but it’s one that never fails to make him faintly sick.

On his long walk back down from the Governor’s mansion, he whispers her name to himself, the tiniest rebellion.

_ Annabeth _ .

This time, Percy doesn’t bother trying to force away the smile.

Knowing that almost all the Lobsterbacks will be up attending Sloan’s ridiculous promotion ceremony, he wanders down to the port. His smithing is done for the day, and he likes to watch the ships, especially the fancy new HMS  _ Interceptor.  _ It has a private dock with a particularly rude 24 hour guard, but he can still gaze from a distance. It’s a strained time in Port Royal, with the growing tensions between the British in the port and the Maroons farther inland. Percy would’ve made his way into the mountains years ago, probably, if it weren’t for two things: Annabeth and, of course, the sea. 

The water still calms him, despite the fact that it’s been years since he was last on a ship. He used to vaguely entertain the idea of becoming a deckhand, too, but it had meant sailing away from Port Royal — and by extension, Annabeth — for good. Blacksmithing, on the other hand, meant a steady job in town. The decision wasn’t a difficult one, at the time, but a deep part of him still longs for the water, still longs for a life that Port Royal can’t give him. Being at the docks helps him feel a little less crazy, a little less like he’s one bad decision away from ignoring the Governor’s very clear warning and storming the promotion ceremony happening in the fort and begging Annabeth on his knees to be his best friend again. 

That way madness lies, so Percy finds a quiet spot, removes his boots, and dangles his feet in the cool water. It’s hot today, hotter than usual, and the part of his brain that’s always thinking about Annabeth Chase wonders if she’s particularly miserable in that corset she’s been stuffed into. The dock he’s sitting on is close enough to the high wall of the fort that he can hear the muted noise of conversations on top of the main curtain. It’s not all that far up, but it’s enough that Percy doesn’t drive himself crazy trying to get a glimpse of familiar blonde hair. 

Instead, he entertains himself by watching the two idiot guards who clearly didn’t make the cut for Sloan’s promotion and are instead stuck guarding the  _ Interceptor _ . It’s smaller than the  _ Dauntless _ , which is moored farther out in the bay, but Percy is still taken aback by its beauty. He loves that ship, and has spent quite a bit of his free time watching it speed about the port on inspection tests. Part of him bristles at the lowest of the low being left to guard it, but that’s the Navy for you. They never seem to know what they’ve got until someone else tries to take it. A drunk stumbles down the dock towards the guards and is shooed off , and Percy laughs to himself as they nearly fall into the water as they retreat.

There’s always  _ something _ to watch at the docks, that’s for sure. Turning his gaze to further out in the bay, where the  _ Dauntless _ is moored, Percy lets himself sink back into his regular fantasy of being on deck of either vessel, whether it be the absolute powerhouse that dominates the Caribbean, or the smaller and faster ship that’s supposed to be near uncatchable. He usually settles on the  _ Interceptor _ as his favorite, closes his eyes and imagines the light sea breeze is a heavier one, filling the sails behind him and carrying him over the waves, fast as can be. He can almost trick himself into feeling a warm body standing next to his own, her familiar laughter lost in the wind. 

It’s a good fantasy. 

//

Annabeth can’t fucking breathe. 

Maybe it’s the heat, or maybe the dressers pulled her corset extra tight this morning, but for whatever reason she can’t get enough air into her lungs. She walked away from the crowds a while ago, and is leaning against the cool stone battlements, trying to slow her breaths down so she doesn’t panic. It’s not quite working, but —

“May I have a moment?”

Of course. Of fucking course Commodore fucking Sloan has spotted her, out of all the people. Annabeth sends him a weak smile, quite literally incapable of mustering the air to speak.

Sloan smiles, his ugly chipped tooth as distracting as always. “You look lovely, Annabeth.” 

Annabeth nods, her heart beating faster and faster as her lungs begin to burn. Her hand clutches the left side of her corset, fumbling with the fabric, trying to get at the lump of the knife she never thought she’d actually have to use. 

Sloan seems annoyed that he’s yet to get an actual response from her, but he continues prattling on anyway. “I apologize if I seem forward, but I must speak my mind…”

Again, Annabeth has nothing to say, and if she was less concerned with the way her vision is going dark and fuzzy around the edges she would be able to register the annoyed twitch of his eyebrows and way he clears his throat.

“This promotion throws into sharp relief that which I have not yet achieved.” Sloan takes a deep breath before continuing, “a marriage to a fine woman. You have become a fine woman, Annabeth.”

Annabeth finally finds the air to gasp out, “I can’t breathe.”

  
Sloan looks away from her, gazing across the bay to where the  _ Dauntless _ floats and beyond. “Yes, I’m a bit nervous myself,” he says.

He’s still looking towards the horizon when Annabeth falls. By the time her name is screamed over the top of the battlements, all that can be seen is a frothy ring of white standing out starkly against the blue of the water below.

//

Percy spent much of his early life on a boat, so he can’t say exactly  _ when _ he learned to swim, just that he’s always known . He  _ can _ , however, say that he’s never been quite so thankful to be so good at it.

It’s mostly reflex that moves him through stripping off his coat and shoes before leaping off of the dock. Seeing someone fall from the top of the fortress wall all the way down to the water by the docks kicked him into some kind of instinct; he’s already diving in before he’s really even thought about what he’s doing.

Opening his eyes against the sting of the salt is momentarily disarming, but then he focuses in on the figure slowly sinking down, her dress inflated by the water. The light streaking through the water bounces off the blonde of the woman’s hair and—Percy knows that blonde. His paddling becomes less controlled, more frantic. His lungs burn as he pushes himself down to grab Annabeth by the waist. Her clothes, layered and heavy, make it impossible to lift her, so he desperately rips at the layers of her skirt until he can drag her towards the surface.

He gasps in frenzied gulps of air as they breach the surface, but Annabeth remains still, her head hanging limp. He pulls her to the nearest dock, his legs kicking wildly, and hauls her out of the water. He lays her down as carefully as possible, fingers gentle on the back of head —s he’s still not breathing, not moving in any way, and Percy’s hands can’t stop shaking as he tries in vain to undo the water-swollen knots lacing up her corset. His coat and boots are still in a pile nearby, and Percy is cursing himself for not bringing a sword or knife with him. If only he had something sharp, something —

Percy’s eyes snap to the corset that’s still laced up tight around Annabeth’s ribs. His desperation making him far bolder than he would be any other time, he feels along the side of Annabeth’s corset until he finds a bump.

He pulls out the knife he crafted himself and cuts the corset laces off in one swift movement, turning Annabeth onto her side as she begins to vomit up seawater. Keeping his eyes up, Percy fumbles for his coat and lays it over her torso, only then looking down to brush the wet tendrils of hair out of her face. Her eyes are closed, and she alternates coughing up more water and sucking in deep breaths of air. Percy’s fingertips linger on her temple as he strokes her hair and mumbles any comforting words he can think of.

Her chest stops heaving after a long minute, and she pushes herself up on one elbow. Percy can’t stop the joke that slips out. “You’re drooling,” he says.

Annabeth glares, maneuvering one arm out from under his jacket to to weakly punch him in the shoulder. 

Percy feels relief wash over him like a tsunami.

“I didn’t think I’d ever actually cut a corset off with that,” Annabeth mumbles, glancing down at the knife that’s on the deck beside them.

A hysterical sort of giggle works its way up Percy’s throat until it bursts out of him, high pitched, unrestrained, and completely embarrassing. It startles a breathless laugh out of Annabeth, too, until they’re both red in the face and gasping for air in a way that’s far less life threatening.

They hit a moment when Percy feels like he can finally breathe, only to have Annabeth reach up and pick a piece of seaweed out of his hair, which just sets them both off again. They’re still laughing, Annabeth’s fingers grasping the front of his now soaked and translucent shirt, when thundering footsteps shake the dock below them. The Governor and Commodore Sloan lead a troop of panicked looking soldiers to a skidding halt in front of them.

“Annabeth,” Governor Chase says, kneeling down. “Oh, my darling, you’re alright.” He takes his own coat off to wrap it around her shoulders, still panting from his sprint down from the battlements.

Percy scrambles to his feet and backs away, diverting his eyes. He hasn’t heard Governor Chase call Annabeth that since they were small, since before his second marriage and the birth of the twins.

“Jackson.”

Percy turns, surprised that Sloan is speaking to him at all. In the past, Percy has been ignored by him at every occasion. He does his best not to actively scowl at him.

“What business does a blacksmith’s  _ apprentice _ have down at the docks?” Sloan spits out.

“Commodore,” Annabeth interrupts, finally being helped to her feet. She’s got Percy’s plain jacket tightly wrapped around her and her father’s draped over her shoulders like a gaudy cape. She steps forward so that she’s between him and Percy. “Percy just saved my life.” She shifts so that her shoulder pushes back against his chest; it’s more grounding than the dock beneath his feet. 

Percy knows that Sloan hates him, knows that he’s always made people nervous, knows that the Governor has never been comfortable with a nobody orphan being so close with his family, but Annabeth has only ever fiercely protected him. Even though he’s soaked to the bone and a harsh wind has picked up, Percy feels perfectly warm.

Sloan gives Percy what might be called a nod, an ugly expression on his ugly face. Annabeth is led away by her father, the soldiers falling out behind them, and she glances back to Percy exactly once.

He stands on the dock, dripping and alone and still barefoot, and raises his hand in a gentle wave.

//

When Percy makes his way back to the smithy, his clothes now damp instead of soaking wet and Annabeth’s knife in his belt, Mr. D is still passed out by the warmth of the forge. An empty bottle rests by his limp hand.

“Right where I left you,” Percy says. He shrugs out of his vest so that he can lay it by the fire, and as he does he notices a hammer resting askew on his anvil. “Not where I left  _ you _ ,” he mumbles to himself. He reaches out for it, and while his hand is outstretched the flat of a blade smacks against the back of it. Startled, he jerks it away and turns to find a sword pointed at his chest. The woman holding it looks thoroughly grungy, from the dark kohl around her eyes to the choppy cut of her very dark hair and mismatched articles of clothing. Her eyes are a startlingly bright blue, and are currently narrowed right at Percy.

“You’re the woman they’re hunting,” he realizes. “The pirate, from Tortuga.” The notices have been up in town all week.

The woman makes a face at the mention of Tortuga. “And you’re wet,” she observes. “You seem somewhat familiar, have I threatened you before?”

“I make a point to avoid familiarity with pirates,” Percy says, eyes still trained on the sword that’s hovering a few inches from his throat.  _ I get in enough trouble as it is _ .

The woman’s lips twitch. “I’d hate to put a black mark on your record.” She lowers her sword and makes to leave. “If you’ll excuse me, then.”

The sword flashes as it’s lowered and —well, that’s not  _ her _ sword at all. Percy smithed that sword himself, and it  _ should _ be hanging by his anvil. The moment she’s turned he grabs the closest weapon, a slightly older  rapier, and nudges it against her back. It’s not his usual choice of sword, but it’ll do just fine at keeping her from stealing one of his. Especially since he’s bound to be blamed for the missing sword himself.

She turns back slowly, eyes squinting in the lower light of the smithy. “You sure about this? Crossing blades with the captain of the infamous  _ Black Pearl _ ?”

Percy swallows, but keeps his sword outstretched. Her blade comes up to slide against his, and Percy remembers it now, how he had to spend days perfecting that hilt and balancing the weight of it.

When her first attack comes, quick but cautious, like she’s testing the waters, he parries it easily and ripostes. She deflects and lets her arms hang, clearly surprised, but Percy isn’t foolish enough to think that she’s anything but ready to attack.

“You know what you’re doing, I’ll give you that,” she says. “But how’s your footwork? If I step here...” She crosses one foot over the other, making to circle around to his left, and Percy parrots her effortlessly in the opposite direction. “Very good,” she murmurs, almost to herself. “And if I step again…”

Percy mirrors her again, all the while deflecting blow after blow. She’s not the most difficult opponent he’s faced, if he’s being honest, but he also isn’t sure that she’s really trying all that hard. There’s a dull panic in his chest about being caught with a pirate, despite the fact that they’re fighting; he’s not entirely sure he wouldn’t get thrown in a cell alongside her. “Are you having fun?” He spits out. 

The woman nods again, pausing her circling before trying to sneak a surprise thrust that Percy parries as easily as anything, twisting the tip of his sword at the base of her blade and making it fall out of her hand. “Ta,” she says. “Well, if that’s all.” She makes a dash for the door, which she has very cleverly situated herself closer to during all of her circling. 

Thinking quickly, Percy chucks the rapier he’s got so that it embeds the beam keeping the door shut, barring the woman from leaving. She tries at first to yank the sword out of the wood, but it’s firmly stuck, and Percy lets himself smirk a bit.

“Good trick,” she says, not sounding complimentary at all. She stalks towards him. “Except, once again, you are between me and my way out.” She draws the sword that’s in her belt. “And now you have no weapon.” Her eyes, bright blue and disarming, watch him like a hawk.

Percy can feel a bead of sweat trickle down his temple, the heat of the furnace at his back thick and heavy. He flails a hand out behind himself, across the bricks before the fire, and grabs onto the hilt of the sword he left in the flames earlier. 

The woman frowns and launches into a set of slashes and thrusts that have Percy scrambling to keep up. “Who  _ makes _ all these swords,” she huffs, frustrated.

“ _ I  _ do,” Percy says, breathing heavily now that his opponent is truly putting the effort in to beat him. He steps forward in a bolder attempt to get her off rhythm, narrowly dodging a slash to the cheek. “And I practice with them three hours a day.”

“You need to find yourself a girl, mate.” She lands a sound knock on his wrist with the pommel of her sword that sends him swinging around, and when he clambers to face her again, he finds a pistol leveled at his face.

“That’s cheating,” he says, surprised. Still, he doesn’t move from his spot between her and the back door.

“Pirate,” she says in lieu of an explanation. She gestures with the pistol. “Move away from the door.”

Percy’s hand flexes around the grip of his sword. His heartbeat thunders in his ears. He has a vague memory of fingers running through his hair, of a necklace being placed around his neck, of a warm voice saying  _ be brave, Percy _ . “No,” someone says. It takes a moment for it to register that he’s the one who’s spoken. 

Her eyes dart to the side anxiously. “ _ Please _ move?” she tries. There’s the sound of footsteps outside, and the front door begins to rattle, still held closed by the rapier he threw a few minutes ago. The muffled noise of instructions being shouted tells him it’s the Navy, and he wonders how they figured out she was here—maybe their fight had been louder than he realized.

Despite the general smell of rum and dirt under her nails, Percy has a hard time believing this woman could truly be as wanted as the search that’s been happening around the port for the past two days suggests. Even as she’s been fighting him she’s been careful with her movements, trying to beat him without ever coming close to seriously injuring him. Percy stares down the pistol in his face and strengthens his resolve. “No,” he insists. “I can’t just step aside and let you escape.” What would the Governor think? Would he ever be allowed his brief glimpses of Annabeth again?

The woman cocks the pistol, looking more furious by the moment. “This shot is not meant for you,” she spits out.

Percy tilts his head to the side, confused. That’s all he gets to do before there’s a crash and the pirate falls to the ground.

Behind her, with a broken bottle in his hand, is Percy’s drunk of a boss, stumbling to regain his balance even as he stands still. Percy stands in shocked silence even as a troop of Redcoats comes charging in, finally bursting through the door. Leading them, of course, is the new Commodore himself.

Sloan looks down at the sprawled body of the rogue pirate and his lip curls around his snaggletooth. “Excellent job, Mr. D,” he says, not even looking Percy’s way. “You’ve assisted in the capture of a dangerous fugitive.”

“Just doin’ my civic duty, sir,” Mr. D slurs out. 

Percy bites the inside of his cheek. Being ignored he’s used to, but rarely at this level.

“Well, I trust you will remember this as the day that Captain Thalia Grace  _ almost _ escaped,” Sloan says grandly. 

Percy frowns. Mr. D won’t remember much of anything, but it’s a thoroughly pompous phrase, so he isn’t surprised to hear it from Commodore Pompous and Arrogant himself. Percy wonders if he’s frustrated that there’s no scribe to write it down for him, but then again it'll probably get recounted loudly at one of those horrible officer’s banquets Annabeth always complains about. 

Sloan gives a few sharp orders to his cronies, who drag the woman up and away. Percy stares at her dragging boots as they disappear out the door, feeling overwhelmed about this entire afternoon. They’re all gone just as quickly as they arrived, until Percy is alone again with his boss.

There’s a burp and then a loud snore to his right. Percy doesn’t bother looking over.

//

“There you go, miss.” The chambermaid puts the tin of hot coals in the container under Annabeth’s mattress. She usually does it herself, but she’s letting her father pamper her a bit, what with her near death experience. There’s also the very large and purple bruise that’s developing along her side from where she hit the water, but she’s done relatively well at hiding that so far. She’s almost glad that it happened, in a sick way— _ almost _ , that is. It’s just nice to have his full attention, for once. “It was a difficult day for you, I’m sure.”

Annabeth hums, flipping to a new page in her book. The mattress begins to heat up under her almost immediately. It’s colder than she would’ve guessed by the warmth of the morning. “I suspected Commodore Sloan would propose, but I admit I wasn’t entirely prepared for it.” 

The girl huffs. “I meant that fall! And being down by the docks when that pirate was on the loose, before they caught her, sounds terrifying!”

“Oh,” Annabeth says, surprised. “I didn’t catch a glimpse of her, actually.” She tries not to sound too disappointed.

“But, the Commodore proposed! Fancy that.” She tugs at the covers, lingering to talk. “That’s a smart match, miss, if it’s not too bold to say.”

“It is a smart match,” Annabeth mutters dully, her fingers running along the side of her book. “He’s what any woman should dream of marrying.”

“That Percy Jackson…” the maid says, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “How he jumped into the water to save you, miss. He’s a fine man, too.”

Annabeth’s fingers still. “That is too bold,” she says, her own voice sounding cold in her ears.

The maid smiles and tilts her head. “Begging your pardon, miss,” she apologizes, making to leave. “It was not my place.”

Annabeth is left alone, then, but she doesn’t pick her book back up. The buttresses of Notre Dame would fascinate her on any other day; today, however, she’s got too many thoughts swirling around her head to focus on words and letters that swim around the page.

  
Her hand drifts down to the chain that’s heavy on her collarbones. She isn’t sure why she put it on this morning, the golden pendant that she found around Percy’s neck the day she met him. She’s glad he’s courteous enough that he didn’t look down when it was exposed from where it was carefully tucked inside of her corset.

She doesn’t wear it often. There’s something unsettling about it, about the weight of it in her palm and the way it shimmers. Usually, it stays tucked behind the less read books on her bookshelf, but something about today…

The candle on her bedside table gets blown out by a strong gust of wind coming in through her open window. Annabeth frowns. It’s not storm season, not yet, but the weather got gloomier with unusual pace in the afternoon and evening. She considers calling someone to ask them to close it so rain won’t blow in during the night, but her eyelids are heavy and she’s had a long day.

She marks the page of her book and closes her eyes, quickly slipping into sleep. 

//

On his way back from feeding the smithy donkey, Percy stops in at the pub around the corner. He’s there to drop off some horseshoes to the barkeep, but is happy to have the excuse to get off the streets, even if it’s just for a moment. It’s foggy and unsettlingly quiet out, and it’s put him on edge. Fog’s put him on edge ever since—well, ever since he was younger. Inside, however, isn’t much better . Small groups are crowded together, talking in hushed tones. Unnerved, Percy puts the sack of horseshoes on the counter and takes the pouch of coins he’s offered in return.

“Has something happened?” he asks.

“The usual,” the man says. “Superstitious folk, sailors. The turnin’ weather’s got ‘em nervous. Talk of pirates on the horizon.”

“Not just  _ pirates _ ,” another voice chimes in. Percy turns to see a lone man slumped over the bar, his face half pushed into a tankard. “The  _ Black Pearl _ follows when this fog comes.” At Percy’s blank look, he continues, “ sails as black as death, crewed by the damned and captained by a man so evil that hell himself spat him back out? She’s been prayin’ on ships and settlements for near ten years now. Never leaves survivors. You’ve never heard the stories, boy?”

The  _ Black Pearl _ was the ship Thalia Grace claimed to be the captain of, and seeing as she was now locked away in the cells of Port Royal, Percy doubts they’re in much trouble. He shakes his head and pockets his money. “If there are never any survivors, where do the stories come from?” The drunk at the bar frowns. Percy rolls his eyes. Even though he’s not particularly superstitious, he rushes home, eager to fall asleep after a terror of a day.

Of course, things are never that easy for Percy Jackson.

//

It’s the canonfire that wakes Annabeth up.

She throws back the covers and stumbles over to the window, pushing aside the curtains. From the house’s place on the hill, it’s not difficult to see the smoke that’s rising from the fort, or the fires blazing in town. All of her childish wonders of what a pirate would look like up close wither and die in an instant —this is real, and very,  _ very _ bad. From her spot in the window, she can see a group of men break through the gates and come up the drive, illuminated by the torches they carry.

She rushes out of her room and to the staircase. There’s a knock at the door as she goes, and she watches helplessly as their butler makes to open it. “Don’t,” she calls out, but it’s too late. He opens the door and is shot immediately, hitting the floor with a terrible thud. The scream that comes out of her mouth is past her control, and it makes the eyes of the men turn right towards her. Panicked, she turns and bolts back up the stairs, making a right turn once she reaches the second floor. It leads towards her room, and conveniently away from her her step-mother and brothers. If they have any sense they’ll keep quiet on the other side of the floor and let the silver downstairs be pillaged.

Annabeth manages to get through a door and lock it, nearly screaming again as she collides with the chambermaid from earlier. “They’ve come to kidnap you,” the girl gasps out, grasping the edges of Annabeth’s robe.

“What?”

“You’re the Governor's daughter,” she says.

Annabeth goes cold all over. The maid is right, and Annabeth knows it. 

“We know you’re in there, poppet,” a rough voice yells. The door rattles loudly as the men try to force their way through. “You’ve got something of ours, and it calls to us.”

“Listen, they haven’t seen you,” Annabeth says as quietly as she can. “Hide, and the first chance you get, run to the fort.”

The girl nods. Annabeth shoves her towards a closet and hurries to her bedroom just as the door flies open. She goes for the metal pan of hot coals under her bed, managing to whirl around and smack the first pirate in the face as he rushes into the room. He drops like a rock, and when another man follows him Annabeth uses the trigger on the handle to release the hot coals onto his head. It buys her a valuable moment of time to think, but in her panic on the stairs Annabeth hadn’t planned out her fight properly—she’s backed herself into a corner, literally. Her room is on the corner of the floor, and the pirate hopping around and brushing coals from his hair stands between her and her way out. 

Ticking through her limited options, she makes for her window and the balcony. She’d probably be fine from the drop, but her side still hurts terribly.  _ You’ve got something of ours _ , he had said. What? Her hand goes to the piece of pirate gold around her neck right as she hears the sound of a pistol being cocked.

“Turn around, poppet,” the man says. Slowly, Annabeth does, racking her brain for a way out. She can’t jump without being shot, can’t run past them, and they don’t look like they’re in the mood for talking—

“Parley,” Annabeth gasps out, her mouth working faster than her brain. 

The twisted smile of the man holding the pistol falters. “What?”

“Parley,” Annabeth repeats. “I invoke the right of parley. According to the Code of the Brethren, set down by the pirates Morgan and Bartholomew, you have to take me to your Captain.”

“I know the code,” he says, sounding insulted.

“If an adversary demands parley, you can do no harm until the parley is complete.”

The pirate blinks stupidly. Annabeth gulps. 

//

By the time the pirates make it to shore and into town, Percy already has three swords, four knives, and two hammers assembled about his person. There’s too many of them for him to feel like he can make an actual difference, but he tries anyway, launching himself at man after man. The words from the drunk at the pub float around his head, but he still can’t understand how so many people can fit on one ship—no matter how many are cut or gunned down, there always seem to be more to fill their spot.

They’re also good with swords, although most seem uninterested in actually fighting him. He spends more time trying to knock back little cannonball grenades from houses and storefronts, catching a few nasty burns on his hands in the process. He’s busy tossing one into a bucket of water when a particularly horrible smelling man goes after him with a rapier. Percy brings up his own sword just in time, working quickly to parry the blows and trying to find a hole in his defense. 

“You—smell—” he spits out, finally managing to stick his sword through the man’s chest on his third thrust, “ _ disgusting _ .” The pirate drops and Percy rushes off to see if he can do anything about the flames pouring out of the bakery windows. He makes a few rushed trips to the well in the square and back, managing to get the worst of it, before someone slams him to the ground. The smell hits him before his eyes register the man he ran through with a sword mere minutes ago. He gapes up at an ugly grin before something slams into his head and the world goes black.

//

The crew of the infamous  _ Black Pearl _ are far more disorganized than Annabeth would’ve thought, all rushing around on deck and throwing piles of gold and stolen goods together in piles. There’s a lot of yelling and smoke, and it's dark from the heavy cloud cover above. Annabeth’s brain struggles to take it all in at once, her eyes flying from person to person as they rush around her.

“I didn’t know we were taking on captives,” one of the deckhands says.

“She’s invoked the right of parley with Captain Castellan,” the pirate with the grip on her arm says. 

“I —” Annabeth starts.

The deckhand raises a hand as if to strike her, but before Annabeth can flinch a tall man with blonde hair has grabbed it in his own. “You will not lay a hand on those under the protection of parley,” he says softly. 

Despite the low volume of the speaker’s voice, the deckhand cowers. “Yes, Captain,” he mumbles, scurrying away.

Captain Castellan turns to her. “Apologies, miss,” he says. 

Annabeth isn’t sure what she expected the captain of the  _ Pearl _ to look like, but it wasn’t this. He’s young, for one, with light blue eyes and hair the kind of blonde that can only come about from spending all day under the sun. The only pirate-y thing about him is the horrible scar that stretches from his left eyebrow down to his jaw, twisting up all the skin on one side of his face. 

He’s—attractive, honestly. Annabeth is momentarily disarmed.  She swallows. “Captain Castellan,” she starts. “I’m here to negotiate the cessation of hostilities against Port Royal.”

Castellan smiles, which makes the skin around his scar twist up even more horribly. “Lot of long words in there, miss. We’re not but humble pirates.” There’s a look in his eye that makes her seriously doubt that. “What is it that you want?” he asks.

“I want you to leave and never come back,” Annabeth says, her chin high.

There’s a ripple of laughter through the crowd of pirates that’s gathered around them—clearly this interaction is more interesting than counting the gold they’ve stolen. 

Castellan shifts his weight. “I’m disinclined to acquiesce your request,” he drawls. When Annabeth just stares at him, he leans forward a bit. “Means ‘ _ no _ .’”

“Very well,” Annabeth answers. She’s already standing by the railing, so she just has to yank the necklace from her throat and hold it over the water. “I’ll drop it,” she threatens. 

The attitude of everyone on deck shifts slightly. They all seem to go still, but Castellan just shrugs with an air of indifference. “My holds are bursting with gold,” he says. “What makes you think that matters to us?”

“It’s what you’ve been searching for,” Annabeth answers confidently. She had a hunch, but in the time it took to get her from her house to the ship she’d turned it over and over in her head and this makes the most sense. “It  _ calls _ to you,” she says, repeating the words the pirate had said to her. “I recognize this ship. I saw it six years ago on the crossing from England.”

Castellan just stares at her, one hand resting loosely on the sword in his belt.

“Fine,” Annabeth says. “I suppose, if it’s worthless, there’s no purpose in keeping it.” She lets some of the chain of the necklace run slack before tightening her grip again, and in the few seconds the medallion had dropped nearly everyone on deck had taken a panicked step towards her. 

Annabeth smirks.

Castellan chuckles darkly, taking a step closer. “Have a name, miss?”

“Annabeth,” she says. Admitting she’s the Governor’s daughter is probably not the smartest thing to do. “Jack...” she trails off. Is there a way she could end up dragging Percy into this, by accident? “Annabeth Jack. I’m a maid in the Governor’s household.”

Castellan turns and faces his crew. “Miss  _ Jack _ ,” he says, his voice implying some meaning that Annabeth doesn’t understand. The crew must, though, because the name travels through the crowd quickly, with voices picking up excited sounding side conversations. The Captain whirls around to look at her again. “Unusual name, that. Not ‘Jackson?’ Just Jack?”

Annabeth breathes as evenly as she can, despite the panic that rises up in her.  _ Not Percy. He can’t have Percy _ . “Just Jack,” she repeats.

“How does a maid come to own a trinket such as that?” Castellan presses. “Family heirloom, perhaps?”

His eyes are wide and unblinking, a very light blue.  _ Family heirloom _ . Annabeth hates riddles she can’t piece apart. “I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you mean,” she says.

He doesn’t react much, holding the same tension in his shoulders, and Annabeth’s brain feels overloaded as she tries to figure him out. “Very well,” he finally says, raising an empty palm. “Hand it over and we’ll put your town to our rudder and never return.”

Annabeth looks between the outstretched hand and Castellan’s stoic face. Try as she might, she can’t seem to figure out a reasonable alternative to handing the medallion over, and she knows that Castellan knows it to. Begrudgingly, she places it in his hand. He pockets it quickly. “Our bargain?” she asks.

He turns and nods to one of the crew members before walking away. The man, who’s easily three heads taller than her, starts yelling instructions in a booming voice. “Still the guns and stow them. Make to clear port!” All around, the bustling once again begins, this time with more purpose and cohesion. 

What no one does, however, is make any move to get Annabeth off the boat.

“Wait,” she calls out, managing to catch up to Castellan’s retreating figure, “you have to take me to port! According to the Code of the Order of the Brethren—”

“First,” Castellan interrupts her, whirling around, “your return to shore was not part of our negotiation, nor our agreement, so I  _ must _ do nothing. Secondly, you must be a pirate for the Pirate’s Code to apply, and  _ you _ are not, and thirdly, the Code…” his quick words peter out as he tilts his head to the side, searching for the right phrase. “It’s more what you’d call  _ guidelines _ than actual rules.” He grins at her, a glimpse of gold flashing in his mouth. “Welcome aboard the  _ Black Pearl _ , Miss Jack.”

//

Percy wakes up with a pounding headache and his face in the dirt. 

It’s morning, and bright enough already that he has to squint and blink a few times before he can see anything clearly. Around him, people bustle about putting out the remaining fires and wheeling bodies off of the street. He’s embarrassed and in pain, but Port Royal seems to have survived the worst of it; things certainly could be worse.

He has an hour of ignorance that’s anything but bliss, filled mostly with helping a few neighbors clear rubble and debris from their shops, but then word passes his way. Port Royal, even with its increased amount of troops and harsh control under the British, is filled to the brim with incurable gossips. It’s almost unbelievable that it took so long for the news to reach him, honestly, but he really should’ve realized that the shifty eyes he’d gotten all morning didn’t have to do with the way he’d ended up passed out in the gutter. The pity in their eyes hadn’t made sense—now it does.

Annabeth is gone.

The place on his head that’s been throbbing all morning stops hurting. Percy loses most physical sensation for a moment, as though he’s been plunged deep into the ocean where sunlight can’t reach. There’s a hundred layers of terror built up inside of him, the phrase  _ lost at sea _ echoing inside his bones the way they always have. Is he doomed to lose another person he loves to the ocean, to be left behind on the shore, unable to help?

He’s at the fort before he even realizes where he’s going. It’s a mess like town is, but Percy doesn’t see it—he sees only the Governor and a handful of officers pouring over a map.

“They’ve taken her,” he says, stupidly, once he’s pushed his way past people who could probably have him killed. The map is upside down from this side of the table, but Percy probably would’ve had as much luck reading it right side up. The little phrases written in might as well be French; he doesn’t waste his time trying to decipher them. He just stares at the Governor more directly than he’s dared in years, silently begging him to say that it’s all been some giant misunderstanding. The heartbroken look he receives in return squishes the last spark of hope still fighting in his chest.

“We have to hunt them down,” Percy continues, the words tumbling out of him. He can’t bother to even try to think before he speaks. “We have to save her.”

Governor Chase sighs and rubs a hand across his forehead. “Where do you propose we start?” he asks. It’s clear from his tone that he expects Percy to be unable of coming up with any ideas of his own. 

The officer hunched over the map looks up. It’s Sloan, of course, and the glare he levels Percy with can only be described as poisonous. “If you have  _ any _ information concerning Annabeth I suggest you come forward,” he spits out. 

Percy bristles—he’s closer than he’s ever been to throwing a punch, but something occurs to him. “That pirate who broke into the smithy,” he starts, “Thalia Grace. She mentioned the  _ Black Pearl _ .”

A group of blank faces meets his statement.

“So  _ ask her _ ,” he continues. “Make a deal with her or something. She could lead us to them.”

“No,” Sloan says, looking back down at the map, as though Percy isn’t even worth his eye contact. “She was left in her cell last night. The pirates that were here are not her friends.” He straightens up again. “Governor, we can establish their most likely—”

Percy slams the axe still left on his belt from last night onto the table, right in the center of their map. It splits the parchment and embeds itself into the wood below, and everyone around him seems to go tense at once. “That’s not good enough,” he roars. “We have to—”

“Mr. Jackson,” Sloan interrupts, wiggling Percy’s axe out of the table, “you’re not a military man. You’re not even a sailor. You’re a  _ blacksmith _ .” His tone makes it clear what he thinks of Percy’s profession. 

Governor Chase moves around the table and takes Percy’s arm, leading him away from the group of officers. “Now is not the time for rash actions,” he says lowly. “You’re not the only person who—who cares for Annabeth.”

_ Is that why you’ve spent the last seven years ignoring her? _ he’s tempted to ask.  _ Is that why you’re practically selling her off to assface Sloan? _ Instead, he just clenches his jaw, knowing the moment he opens his mouth he’ll probably start screaming and never stop. The Governor squeezes his arm and goes back to the table, two soldiers moving to block Percy from following.

That’s fine with him. He doesn’t have the time to try and make people listen; there are more important things to do. He goes back to his loft above the smithy and changes clothes, loading up his belt with his best sword and a few knives. The one he made Annabeth, which he took from the docks yesterday, is strapped in extra carefully. With one last look to check that Mr. D. is still snoring by the fire, he leaves the smithy behind. 

He’s moving quickly, but it’s still almost noon by the time he makes it to the holding cells. It works out in his favor, because it means that he can slip past the guard post as they change shifts for lunch without being seen. He’s never actually been down to the dungeons before, despite Sloan’s best attempts, so he gets a bit turned around, but right as he’s about to abandon a line of what looks like empty cells, his ear picks out a faint little whistle. The tune is hauntingly familiar, like something he’s heard once in a dream, and after he stands dumbly listening for a long moment he walks on, towards the sound.

He finds Thalia Grace laying in the straw on the floor of a cell, idly whistling with her eyes closed. She must hear him approaching, but she doesn’t move.

He clears his throat. “Thalia Grace?”

She opens her eyes and lets her whistling fade out with one trailed off note. She raises an eyebrow.

“You’re familiar with that ship, right?” he asks, his words rushed. “The  _ Black Pearl _ ?”

Her head thumps back down to the ground as she closes her eyes again. “I’ve heard of it.”

Percy doesn’t have the time or the brains to try and weasel the information out of her. “Where does it make berth?”

“Where does it make berth?” she repeats, sounding incredulous. “Have you not heard the stories?”

“No, I haven’t heard the  _ fucking  _ stories,” Percy seethes. “Just  _ tell _ me.”

“ _ Captain _ Castellan,” Grace drawls, something ugly in her voice that Percy can’t quite understand, “and his crew of miscreants sail from the dreaded  _ Isla de Muerta _ . It’s an island that cannot be found except by those who already know where it is.” She grins lazily up at him. 

“The ship’s real enough,” Percy says. “So it has to make anchor somewhere real, too. Where is it?” he asks again. 

Grace stays lounged on the floor of her cell, picking at her fingernails. “Why ask me?”

“Because you’re a  _ pirate _ ,” Percy answers.

She looks up at him again. “And we all know each other, is that it? Get together for tea on Sundays?” 

“No,” Percy says, growing more and more frustrated. “You mentioned the  _ Black Pearl _ when you were trying to steal my sword.” When she doesn’t respond, he admits, “they took Annabeth.”

“ _ Oh _ ,” Grace says, finally sitting up, “so it  _ is _ that you’ve found a girl. I see. Well…” She scratches at her chin. “If you’re intending to brave the heartless seas and attempt a daring rescue and therefore win the fair lady’s heart, you’ll have to do it alone, mate.” She shrugs. “There’s no profit in it for me.”

There’s a hundred things Percy could say:  _ I don’t need to win her heart _ or  _ I just need her to be safe _ or  _ she’d do it for me, I just know she would _ or  _ she’s with pirates dammit a whole ship of pirates and she’s the only woman don’t you understand _ but none of that comes out of his throat. Instead, he says, “I can get you out. That’s what I can offer.”

The pirate on the floor squints at him. “With what keys?”

“I don’t need keys. I helped build these cells,” Percy explains. “These are half-pin barrel hinges.” He steps away to grab one of the guard’s benches and drags it over. “If you hold it in the right place…” He frowns. It makes sense when Annabeth explains it. The word finally comes to him: “leverage! With leverage and the proper application of strength,” he says, more to himself than to the pirate, “it’ll pop right off.” He lifts the bench and shoves the legs of it between the bars. 

“What’s your name?” Thalia Grace asks suddenly.

Percy, about to start lifting, looks up at her. “Percy Jackson,” he says.

“Jackson,” she muses. “Unusual name, too, Percy. Short for anything? Percival?”

Percy wrinkles his nose. “No. It’s, uh, short for Perseus, actually. Like the myth.”

The stare leveled at him is particularly unnerving. “Got a mum who liked that sort of thing? Want to give you a name with a happy ending?”

His hands feel cold where they rest against the iron of the cell. “Yes,” he says softly, thinking of fingers running through his hair and a pair of warm brown eyes. 

Thalia hums, finally moving to stand up. “Well, Mr.  _ Jackson _ ,” she says, “I’ve changed my mind. If you get me out of this cell, I will, upon pain of death, take you to the  _ Black Pearl _ and your bonnie lass.” She sticks a hand through the bars. “Do we have a deal?”

Percy stares at the outstretched hand, trying to weigh his options, but battle strategy was always more Annabeth’s forte. He’s relatively sure that the best odds are laid out in front of him. Shaking this pirate’s hand means kissing his old life goodbye, and after letting that thought stew for another moment he makes his choice. Her calloused palm meets his, and they shake on it. “We have a deal,” he says. 

“Great,” she says brightly. “Now, get me out of here.”

Sure enough, when Percy pushes down on the bench, the door to the cell lifts clean off its hinges with a loud  _ clang _ . “Let’s go,” he urges. “Someone will have heard that.”

“Before we do,” she says, grabbing onto his arm, “this girl.”

“Annabeth,” Percy says.

“Right, her. How far are you willing to go for her?”

“I’d die for her,” Percy responds, immediate and sure. 

“Oh.” Thalia grins. “Good. Off we trot, then.”

//

Annabeth is terrified.

She can’t show it— _ won’t _ show it, but she is. It doesn’t matter much, because she’s been left alone since she was shoved into a dark room as the  _ Black Pearl _ left Port Royal. She wants to scream, to throw something that will shatter against a wall, to have a plan of escape. None of those are options, so she sits as still as can be, her mind running wild.

She isn’t sure how long she sits. That happens to her sometimes, since her naturally fidgety behavior was sternly reprimanded out of her; sometimes she sits and her brain takes its time picking everything in the world apart and when she tunes back in it’s been hours. 

So, Annabeth isn’t sure how long she sits. She sits and she thinks and she refuses to cry, and eventually her eyelids slip shut and she falls asleep.

// 

As they sail away from Port Royal in the  _ Interceptor _ , Percy thinks that Thalia Grace must either be a genius or completely insane.

He’d had no issue following her plan without knowing what it was—after all, that’d been what much of his adventures with Annabeth were. Percy’s always been good at following rules right up to the point where he suddenly isn’t anymore, and he figures he’s got at least a week or so before he’ll hit that point with Thalia. She’s his only option at the moment, so he doesn’t question her, even when she has them paddle out to the  _ Dauntless _ and seize it from the handful of soldiers on board. It’s far too large a ship for two people to be able to sail themselves, so he remains confused until he sees the  _ Interceptor _ racing out of the port towards them.

“We’re going to switch over when they swing on board,” he realizes.

“And they’ve already got the _ Interceptor _ ready for us,” Thalia confirms, smirking. 

“You could’ve explained that as we paddled out here, you know.”

Thalia shrugs, unsheathing her sword. “I wanted to see when you’d figure it out.”

Sure enough, the entire ship of British soldiers swings from the  _ Interceptor _ to the  _ Dauntless _ , leaving it empty for the taking. All they have to do is cut the ropes they swung over on and lower the sails and they’re off.

The  _ Interceptor _ is the fastest ship in the Caribbean, after all. The Lobsterbacks of Port Royal don’t stand a chance at catching them. Percy’s childhood memories combined with what he’s soaked in from spending hours down by the docks helps him do as Thalia directs relatively quickly, his hands managing the knots she asks for before he has time to think about them. 

Thalia spends most of her time at the helm, her eyes flicking back and forth between the horizon and a peculiar looking compass that she keeps stashed on her belt. She stays quiet unless she’s half-asking-half-telling Percy to go and do something, and after hours of the quiet he can’t take it anymore.

“You know,” he says as casually as he can, “my mother raised me by herself.” 

Thalia glances at him, one eyebrow quirked up. The bright blue of her eyes is even more striking when put up against the same bright blue of the sky. “Fascinating,” she says wryly. 

Finishing up tying off the mooring lines to the fittings on deck, Percy leans back against the ropes, his arms crossed. “Sally Jackson,” he says. “It was only after you learned my name that you agreed to help me,  _ and _ you asked about my mom. Since it was your help that I wanted I didn’t say anything, but I’m not an idiot. You know my mother.”

Thalia sighs, flicking her compass closed. “I knew her,” she admits. “Probably one of the few to know her as Sally; everyone else just called her Jack.”

“Jack?”

“That was her name, wasn’t it? Sally Jack. It’s  _ you _ who’s the Jack _ son _ , Perseus.”

“Don’t call me that,” Percy snaps. “What do you know of her?”

“She was a good woman,” Thalia says, shrugging. “Good pirate.” She looks him up and down. “You don’t take after her much, really, except for the nose. And skin, of course. Very unsettling eyes, yours, by the way.”

Percy stiffens. “You keep saying ‘was.’ That you  _ knew _ her.”

Thalia diverts her gaze to where her hands hold the wheel steady. She doesn’t say anything.

“How?” Percy asks, a terrible ache building in his throat. It’s not like he didn’t know, but hope is a dirty little poison.

“You shouldn’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to,” Thalia says. “Get some rest. Once we find my friend in Tortuga there won’t be much opportunity to sleep, I don’t think.”

//

Annabeth keeps her eyes closed when she wakes up. The world around her is rocking faintly, and she thinks she was dreaming about something nice. Something about wind tousled black hair, or maybe just the sound of a laugh on a warm afternoon. She’s lost enough in her thoughts about it that she stays disoriented even once she opens her eyes. 

She’s in an unfamiliar room with the familiar slanted roof of a ship’s officer’s quarters. It’s a mess of eclectic, expensive items, from stray golden goblets to velvet curtains and painted gold wood. 

Yes, of course—pirates, kidnapping, strange golden medallions she’d robbed off the neck of her best friend. All in a usual day.

She isn’t sure how long she’s been asleep, but her eyes feel swollen and her limbs stiff, like it’s been ages. There’s more waiting once she wakes up, and after a hundred breaths of terrified stillness, she dares get up and look around. The windows are small, but she could probably fit through them if she tried. She goes for the latch and finds that they’re bolted shut from the outside—no luck there, then. 

She’s trying to find something sharp when the door unlocks. She rushes to sit before it opens, trying to seem as relaxed as possible, even as her heartbeat thunders inside her ribs. 

The man standing in the doorway isn’t one she recognizes from before, but is thoroughly massive. “The Captain invites you to dinner,” he says, his voice a rumble barely loud enough to be heard over the slapping over the water against the hull.

Annabeth clenches her jaw. “Tell him I’m  _ disinclined to acquiesce his request _ ,” she mocks. 

“Join him for dinner,” the man says, “or don’t eat.”

Her stomach takes this opportune moment to rumble loudly. It has to have been a full day since she’s last eaten. Her throat is dry and she feels weak and shaky—despite the very strong desire in her to turn up her nose and refuse to move, she knows that this opportunity to leave the room is probably the best one she’ll get.

She’s led down the hall to what must be the captain’s quarters. Inside, Castellan stands by a grand dining table crammed full of elaborate plates of meats, bread, and fruits. The chair she’s pointed towards is at the only empty plate, beside a full set of cutlery and a chalice of wine as well. Castellan sits after she does, just around the corner of the table, slouched low in his chair. Somehow the relaxed stance he takes makes him seem even more in command of the room, as though he’s so confident in his leadership that it bores him. He stares at her as she instinctively puts a napkin in her lap and cuts up small, bite-sized pieces of the food served onto her plate. 

“There’s no need for ceremony,” Castellan says after her first few bites. “No one to impress. You must be hungry.”

Annabeth hesitates, eyeing a steaming turkey leg, but the gnawing pain of her stomach wins out. She grabs it with her hands and brings it up to her face, sinking her teeth in savagely. It’s the best thing she’s ever tasted, she thinks, even as it burns the insides of her mouth. She reaches for the bread next, still chewing, knowing it will fill her stomach quickly. She wants to stay full as long as possible, and who knows when the next opportunity to eat this well will be. She’s dead thirsty as well, but has enough self-control not to dribble the wine down her chin as she gulps.

Something green flashes in the corner of her eye. Castellan’s finally moved, and is holding out an apple. “Have an apple next,” he says, his voice sounding eager. There’s a terrifying kind of glint in his eye, and that’s what finally makes Annabeth pause. 

She was so sure that it wouldn’t make sense to poison her—she goes over it again in her head, and comes to the same conclusion. “It’s not poisoned,” she says slowly.

Castellan’s fingers tighten around the apple, breaking the skin and causing it to leak over his hand. He puts it down on the table between them, little bits of white peeking through the green. “There’s no sense in killing you, Miss Jack,” he says.

“Then why am I still here?” Annabeth asks. “You have your trinket. I’m of no further use.”

Castellan reaches inside of his jacket and pulls out the necklace that Annabeth had once stolen from around Percy’s neck. He holds it up where the candlelight can bounce off of its surface. “You don’t know what this is, do you?”

The skull etched on the medallion that Annabeth knows so well from late nights when she would pull it out from its hiding place to gaze at it stares back at her. “Pirate gold,” she answers, even though she now realizes it must be something more. 

Castellan leans forward slightly, his hair catching the candlelight much like the necklace. “This is Aztec gold,” he says softly, dangerously. “One of 882 identical pieces delivered in a stone chest to Cortés himself. Blood money, paid to stem the slaughter he wrecked upon them with his armies.” His voice gets softer still, and takes on the air of someone telling a scary bedtime story. “But the greed of Cortés was insatiable, and placed upon the gold was a terrible curse.”

Annabeth resists the urge to roll her eyes.

“Any mortal who removes but a single piece from that stone chest shall be punished for eternity.”

Annabeth looks up from the medallion to the light blue of Castellan’s eyes, which are unblinking and fixed on her. “I hardly believe in ghost stories anymore, Captain Castellan,” she says.

He smiles at that, which makes the skin on the left side of his face twist terribly around his scar, and leans back again. The necklace goes into his pocket once more. “Yes, that’s what I thought too, Miss Jack. Buried on the Island of the Dead that cannot be found except by those who already know where it is?” He waves a hand as if to swat the idea away, and Annabeth notices that his nails and cuticles are perfectly trimmed. “It’s ridiculous. Or it was, until we found it.

“The chest, the gold, right there in front of us.” His voice loses it’s breathy quality, becomes ugly and rough. “And we took it all.”

Part of her says that he’s lying, but she can’t figure out why he would want to in the first place. What does he gain out of convincing her that a ghost story is true? If he expects to garner sympathy, he’s preaching to the wrong choir.

“We spent them, traded them, gorged ourselves on food and drink and pleasurable company.”

Annabeth works to keep her face even as an uncomfortable shiver works its way up her spine. 

“The more we gave away, the more we came to realize the drink would not satisfy. Food turned to ash in our mouths. All the pleasurable company in the world could not slake our lust. We’re cursed, Miss Jack. We were compelled by greed then, but now…” His eyes shift off of her face and stare over her shoulder, into the distance. “Now we’re consumed by it.”

She takes the opportunity of his distraction to slide the knife beside her plate into her lap. It’s sharp and ridged, meant for cutting through thick meats, and she clenches her fingers around the handle. She wonders if the corset knife Percy had used when he fished her out of the water lies forgotten on the docks.

Castellan looks back at her suddenly, but she does her best not to startle. “There’s only one way to end our curse. All the scattered pieces of the Aztec gold must be restored and the blood repaid.” He gestures to her. “Thanks to you, we have the final piece.”

Annabeth’s brain, working to figure out this tale, momentarily forgets about the knife in her lap. “And the blood to be repaid?”

“That’s why there’s no sense in killing you.” One side of his lip lifts up in what someone might call a smile. “Yet.” He reaches out and picks up the apple that still rests between them, the bits of fruit exposed to the air now an ugly brown. “Apple?”

Fear trembling in her throat, Annabeth stabs the knife through Castellan’s wrist with as much force as she can. He screams, although it sounds like it’s more because he’s surprised than because he’s in pain. Annabeth doesn’t stick around, standing so abruptly her chair clatters backwards. She runs out the door and down the hallway towards the deck, half-heartedly hoping for something along the lines of an unattended rowboat, but when she makes her way to open air she very much wishes she’d stayed in her seat.

Animated and moving skeletons walk around the ship, some swabbing the deck and others working together to tie off one of the sails. Her momentum comes to an abrupt halt at the sight of them, and she blinks rapidly as if that will somehow make the sight in front of her make sense. If it’s all  _ true _ —if there really is a  _ curse _ —

Something hard grabs her arm and whirls her around. She comes face to face with an upright skeleton wearing Captain Castellan’s clothes. The bone under the left eye socket has a groove in it, right where his scar is. Her wrist is caught in a vice grip by the bones of his hand, disgusting pieces of muscles keeping the metacarpals and phalanges strung together. Her stomach turns over and she gulps heavily both to keep from vomiting and to keep from screaming. 

“The moonlight shows us what we really are.” Annabeth stares at his mandible as it moves. “We aren’t among the living, so we cannot die, but we aren’t  _ alive _ either.” His grip around her wrist tightens. “For too long I’ve been parched of thirst and unable to quench it. Too long I’ve been starving to death and haven’t died. I  _ feel  _ nothing—not the wind in my face or the spray of the sea.” He yanks her arm up between them. “Not the warmth of a woman’s skin.

“You best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Jack,” Castellan says, his gold tooth glinting in the moonlight. “You’re in one.”

//

“Mr. Underwood?” Percy says, shocked.

Grover’s hair, longer than it was the last time Percy saw him, hangs in grimy curls. A wisp of a goatee grows valiantly on his chin. He very much has the look of someone who’s been either in the woods or out at sea for a long time. He looks from Thalia, who had first greeted him, over to Percy.

“Percy Jackson,” he breathes. He stands abruptly and pulls Percy into a foul smelling hug, grinning wide. “In Tortuga, of all places.”

Percy hugs him back despite the general stench that implies it’s been a very long time since Grover’s had a shower. He very much fits in with the general grime of this Tortugan pub. “It’s good to see you,” he says earnestly. Besides Annabeth, Mr. Underwood had been the only truly friendly face amongst the crew that had fished him out of the water. He had sailed away roughly a month after they’d made their way to Port Royal, but only after he had called in a favor to get Percy an apprenticeship at the blacksmith’s. It occurs to Percy now, six years later, that Mr. Underwood had saved his life twice: once in the water, and once on land.

Mr. Underwood pulls away, leaning back against the table he’d been sitting at a moment before. “Call me Grover, please. I’m no Navy man, haven’t been for years.”

Thalia frowns. “How on Earth do you two—”

“I pulled him out of the water back when I was, you know…” Grover shrugs. 

“Still selling your soul to the Crown?”

Grover grins again. “Precisely. Should I go get us some drinks?” He scampers away before they really give him an answer, and Percy is left with a scowling Thalia.

“This is weird,” she says. “I don’t like it. Stand over there and keep people from eavesdropping.”

“He’s my friend too,” Percy protests, but goes where she shoves him without much further protest. Grover swings by to drop off Percy’s drink on the way to the table, which he’s grateful for, since he doesn’t at all trust that Thalia wouldn’t have just drunk his. 

“So,” Grover says, depositing a tankard in front of Thalia. “What brings you to the Elysium that is Tortuga?” 

“A venture,” Thalia says vaguely, taking a long sip. 

“A venture,” he repeats. “How can I help with this... _ venture _ ?”

Thalia could beat around the bush, but something about the skinny hand Grover wraps around his drink sends a rush of fondness through her. She gets right to the point. “I’m going after the  _ Pearl _ .”

Grover, having taken his first sip, proceeds to inhale it and cough violently. Thalia reaches across the table to thump him on the back. “You  _ what _ ?” he gasps out.

“I know where it’ll be and I’m going to take it.”

“Thalia,” he says, leaning across the table and lowering his voice, “it’s a fool’s errand. You know the stories of the  _ Black Pearl _ better than me.”

“ _ That’s _ why I know what Castellan is up to,” Thalia insists. “I have a ship. All I need is a crew.” She leans back and lets that sit with him, taking a long sip of her drink.

“You know he’s not the type to suffer fools,” Grover continues, “much less strike a bargain with one.”

“Well, then it’s a good thing I’m not a fool, then,” Thalia drawls.

“You’ve gotta give me  _ something _ , Thalia,” Grover says. “What on Earth makes you think he’ll give up the  _ Pearl _ to you?”

Thalia jerks her chin towards Percy, who she’d left standing guard a good ten feet away from their table, his knuckles white against his tankard. He’s leaning against a wall and looking terribly out of place and on edge, his eyes harshly following anyone who comes even the tiniest bit close. “ _ That _ ,” she says, “is Percy Jackson.”

Grover scratches his goatee. “Okay,” he says slowly, the vowels drawn out. “I knew that.”

“ _ Perseus _ ,” Thalia emphasizes, “ _ Jack _ son.”

Grover blinks. He stares blankly at her for a long moment before his head whips around to take Percy in more completely. “Scylla and Charybdis,” he breathes.

“The son of Sally Jack,” Thalia explains, just to be sure he’s got the picture. “Her  _ only _ son. Savvy?”

“I think I might feel a change in the wind.” Grover smiles. “I’ll find you a crew; there’s bound to be some sailors on this rock as crazy as you.”

Thalia raises her tankard towards him. “One can only hope.”

He raises his own to clunk against hers. “Take what you can,” he starts.

“Give nothing back,” Thalia finishes.

They drink. Ten feet away, Percy takes a tentative sip of whatever Grover had gotten him and immediately spits it back into his tankard.

_ Fucking Tortuga _ , he thinks. He's out of Port Royal, probably for good, but it doesn't have the taste of freedom he'd always thought it would. Instead it's bitter and lonely, all the way down to his bones. In a lot of ways, he's been missing Annabeth for years now, but this—nothing could have prepared him for this. He makes a promise to himself, then, gripping his tankard until his fingernails go white and tuning out the cacophony around him:

He'll find Annabeth and save her, no matter the choices he has to make, and no matter the consequences.

..


	2. two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if im being real i didnt edit this much! apologies for inevitable typos! i diverge from the plot of curse of the black pearl because of Reasons that will become clear

The third time a wave comes over the railing and onto the weather deck, knocking Percy flat on his ass, he starts to truly question whether or not Thalia actually knows what she’s doing. After stumbling to his feet and spitting out a mouthful of seawater, he manages to find Grover. “How can we sail to an island that nobody can find with a compass that doesn’t work?” he asks, raising his voice a bit to be heard over the wind.

Thalia’s spent much of her time since leaving Tortuga at the helm, her eyes going back and forth from the horizon to the compass-like contraption she has in her hand. It doesn’t point her north, from what Percy’s seen, but she follows its commands instantly.

“It doesn’t point north,” Grover concedes, gesturing for Percy to help him pull a rope taught, “but we aren’t trying to _find_ north, are we?”

Percy doesn’t have time to stew on that, because Grover turns and hollers, “we should drop canvas, Captain!”

“She can hold a little longer,” Thalia yells back. “We’re catching up.”

//

They give her a dress to wear—Annabeth doesn’t ask where from. It’s a dark red satin, probably worth more than anything she’s ever worn, and she doesn’t want to know where they got it. She’s allowed to change in privacy, at least, before she’s put into one of the rowboats; it’s there that they tie the medallion around her neck once more. Her wrists are bound together with a rough piece of rope, but she’s so busy trying to take in her surroundings as the men around her paddle that she almost doesn’t notice. 

Most of the world around them is obscured by fog, but they paddle close enough to the coast that she can make out the scraggly rocks that jut out of the water and high into the air, no beaches in sight. The rhythmic slapping of the oars in the waves is the only discernible sound other than her carefully even breaths. There’s no chatter, and she doesn’t wonder why; something about this place commands silence. 

They paddle through an arch in the rock, navigating it effortlessly, and Annabeth thinks of _882 identical pieces_ all returned but one and how many times this path has been travelled before her. The medallion is heavy on her collarbone.

It’s dark once they go through the rocky entrance, but once her eyes adjust she can see just how expansive the cave inside is. Even before they reach the main cavern, she’s taken aback by the huge amounts of gold piled on every rocky surface they pass, and once they _do_ reach the main cavern, well—Annabeth’s never seen that much gold in her entire life. She’s pushed out of the boat and forward, towards a large pile in the center, on top of which rests a gigantic stone chest. The cave system must reach up close to the surface, because streams of light come through in certain places, making everything glisten and shine.

She wants to be dreaming. The rope cuts into her wrists and someone pushes between her shoulder blades and Annabeth is a lot of things, but she is certainly not dreaming.

//

Percy nudges Grover, grabbing his arm immediately after to prevent him from toppling over. “Sorry. I just—how is it that Thalia came by that compass?” It’s not quite the question he wants to ask, but he feels stupid not understand what exactly it points towards if not north. Annabeth probably would’ve figured it out by now.

Grover readjusts his pegleg and then leans back against the railing around the weather deck. “Not much is known about Thalia Grace before she showed up in Tortuga with a mind to find the treasure of the Isla de Muerta. That was before I met her, when she was captain of the _Black Pearl_.”

“So she wasn’t lying,” Percy says, looking to the ship’s wheel where Thalia stands. “She _was_ the captain, once.”

“She plays things closer to the vest, now. It was a hard learned lesson.” He lowers his voice a bit, leaning closer. “See, three days out on the venture the first mate comes to her and says that everything should be in equal share. That should mean the location of the treasure, too. So, Thalia gives up the bearings. That very night there was a mutiny. They marooned her on an island and left her to die.”

Percy whistles. “Shit. Is that why she’s so…” he trails off, gesturing uselessly with his hands.

Grover shrugs. “Beats me. When a pirate’s marooned, they’re given a pistol with a single shot—one shot. It doesn’t do much good for hunting or to be rescued, but after three weeks of starvation and thirst, well…” He raises two fingers to his temple. “That pistol starts to look real friendly. But Thalia escaped the island, and she still has the shot. She won’t use it, though, save for one man.” He pauses dramatically. “Her mutinous first mate.”

“Castellan.”

“Exactly.”

“How did she get off the island?”

Grover grins over at him. “Well, rumor has it that lightning struck a tree and sliced it in two, and she hollowed it out one half herself to make a raft and sail away.”

Percy frowns. “What did she hollow it out with if she only had a pistol?”

“Poseidon’s guess,” Grover remarks. “I don’t go around chopping down trees.”

“My teeth,” Thalia says. They both turn to find her standing only a few feet away. “I hollowed it out with my teeth.”  
  
Grover and Percy share a look.

“Young Mr. Jackson and I will go ashore,” Thalia continues, ignoring them. The _Isla de Muerta_ is just visible through the fog. 

“What if the worst should happen?” Grover asks.

Thalia clasps him on the shoulder. “Stick to the code, Grover.”

He nods. “Of course, captain.”

//

“Gentlemen,” Castellan yells out to the crew, gathered all around them, “the time has come! Our salvation is nigh! Our torment is nearly done.”

Annabeth stands over the chest, elevated above the rest of the pirates, with Castellan at her side. The fear is heavy in her throat.

“For years we’ve been tested and tried, and each man here has proved his mettle a hundred times over and a hundred times again.” The men cheer and Annabeth swallows hard. “We’ve been punished, all of us—disproportionate to our crimes.” He raises a foot and kicks off the heavy stone lid of the chest, revealing hundreds of medallions identical to the one around Annabeth’s neck. “Every last piece that went astray, we have returned. Save for this.” He points to Annabeth’s collarbones. “881 we found but despaired of ever finding the last. Who among us has paid the blood sacrifice to the gods?”

“Us,” the pirates scream back.

“And whose blood must yet be paid?”

“Hers!”

Castellan turns to Annabeth and speaks in a much softer tone, breath hot on the side of her face. “You know the first thing I’m going to do after the curse is lifted?”

Annabeth clenches her jaw. “I don’t give a fuck.”

He smiles at her, and she can’t quite figure out what made her think him attractive. He certainly doesn’t look it now. “We’ll make a pirate of you yet, Miss Jack.” Turning back to the crew below them, he raises a knife above his head. “Begun by blood, by blood undone,” he calls out.

The medallion is ripped from her neck. Castellan grabs one of her bound hands and cuts into the meat of her palm. When the blood swells out of it, he presses the medallion against the cut and then drops it into the chest.

“That’s it?” she asks, shocked.

Castellan’s hand is cold against the back of her neck. “Waste not,” he says.

//

“What code should Grover keep to if the worst should happen?” Percy asks. He’s not rowing, but he sort of wishes he was; he has to face forward and hold the lantern steady, and because of that he sees the blood-stained gold and loose skeletons littered along the outcrops of rock as they make their way farther into the cave.

Thalia’s back is pressed up against his in the rowboat, so he can’t see her reaction to his question. “Pirates’s code,” she answers. “Anyone who falls behind is left behind.”

“No heroes amongst thieves, I guess.”

“Depends on what you count as a hero, Jackson.” Her elbows knock into his back rhythmically. “I bet you fancy yourself one, but you sprung a pirate out of jail, stole a ship from the Imperial Fleet, and are _completely_ obsessed with treasure. Sound more like a thief than a hero, to me.”

Their rowboat comes to a stop by nearly a dozen others, half of which pulled up onto a sandy patch and half of which are tied off to nearby rocks. Percy hops out first, annoyed, and doesn’t offer a hand back to help Thalia out. “That’s not true,” he says.

“Leave the lantern behind,” Thalia tells him, ignoring his comment.

“I’m not obsessed with treasure,” Percy insists, following her down a dark and twisty tunnel of rock. He keeps one oar in his hand, just in case. He’s far more at home on the open seas than he is here, where the air is damp and it feels like they’re twenty feet below ground. He turns a corner and is relieved to see Thalia illuminated in a shaft of light. 

“Not all treasure is silver and gold,” she whispers, gesturing him closer. When he steps next to her, he sees that she’s found a hole that offers a view of the main cavern, where an entire crew of pirates is gathered. Above them all, standing by a chest next to a tall man with equally as blonde hair, is Annabeth.

Percy breathes out her name; it feels like a prayer. He moves to continue, to get closer to her, but Thalia’s hand grabs his arm and holds him back. “Not yet,” she insists. “We need to wait for the opportune moment.”

“When’s that?” Percy shoots back. “When it’s most opportune for _you_ ?” He shakes her hand off. “Annabeth isn’t a _treasure_ , Thalia, she’s my best friend, and I’m going to save her, with or without you.”

“You don’t understand—”

“No, _you_ don’t understand,” Percy cuts her off. Moving quickly to catch her off guard, he swings the oar in his hand around and slams it into her head. She crumples, and Percy winces, hoping he hasn’t done too much damage. “I’m sorry,” he says, earnestly, “but you just don’t understand.”

//

The pirates gathered below her look among themselves. “Did it work?” one of them asks.

“I don’t feel any different,” another one responds.

A third turns to Castellan, still standing by the chest with Annabeth. “How do we tell?”

Castellan takes the pistol out from its holster and shoots the man who spoke in the chest. Annabeth jumps when the shot goes off, but the pirate doesn’t fall. “I’m not dead,” he says, inspecting the bullet hole in his own chest. “It didn’t work!”

Everyone starts yelling then, all trying to speak over each other. Annabeth’s mind is racing, finally managing to piece together all of the parts that haven’t made sense—

A _family heirloom_ , Castellan had said, only after Annabeth had given her fake name. _Who among us has paid the blood sacrifice?_

She stifles a gasp. _They think I’m someone I’m not_.

“Are you not related to Sally Jack?” Castellan asks, grabbing her by the arm and towering over her. 

Annabeth smiles at him. “No,” she says.

His grip tightens as he shakes her. “Who gave you this medallion?” He lifts it, red with her blood, from the chest. She still says nothing, but his eyelids lower to slits. His voice is low and dangerous as he growls out, “did her son give that to you?”

Her silence just makes him more furious, and he backhands her fiercely across the face, knocking her backwards to tumble down the pile of golden objects, down to the very edge of the river that runs through the cave. The sting of the cut on her hand seems less intense now that the rest of her aches as well, and she screws her eyes shut in pain. It’s the distraction of taking stock of her limbs that she blames for not being more aware of her surroundings. 

A wet hand covers her mouth. Her eyes fly open, and she thinks—maybe she has died, after all, and that’s why her world is suddenly seagreen. That’s why she’s getting her reward, all dark messy hair and barely there stubble.

Percy’s head is just above the water, his hand stretched out to prevent her from yelling in surprise. He raises a finger to his lips and Annabeth nods in understanding. Their eye contact holds as she breathes into his palm, a desperate relief flooding all of her senses. 

Of course he followed her. Of course. There’s something inevitable about Percy Jackson. 

He slides his hands back under the surface and Annabeth follows, but not before grabbing the red-tinted medallion that had landed right by her. She slips into the river as quietly as possible, the gold clenched in her stinging palm. He leads her, mostly underwater, away from the mass of pirates and around a corner where they can safely keep their heads in the air. The walls of the cave echo terribly, but there’s a lot of shouting happening behind them, so she throws caution to the waves.

“How are you here?” she asks. “How did you find me?” His hair is wet and plastered to his forehead, getting into his eyes, so she reaches out and pushes it back. It makes it stand up terribly, to be honest, but he smiles at her anyway.

“Does it matter?” he asks. He takes a knife out of his belt— _her_ knife, thank goodness—and cuts her hands free, handing it to her once he’s done. “I believe this belongs to you.”

She’s about to insist that _yes_ , it _does_ matter when a voice raises above the general cacophony of sound.

“It was _you_ who sent Jack to the depths!”

Percy stops breathing. He squeezes his eyes shut and Annabeth can’t stop herself from putting her hand on his cheek. She’s straining to hear anything else when Castellan yells out “the medallion! She’s taken it!”

Percy’s eyes snap open. “We have to get out of here,” he says. “Quickly.”

//

Thalia wakes up with her cheek pushed against a rock, water dripping from the cave ceiling right onto her forehead. She groans and raises one hand to her temple. _Fucking_ Percy Jackson. What an absolute _barnacle_ of a boy.

She’s only just sat up when there’s the edge of a sword grazing the edge of her chin and a dozen roguish faces glaring down at her. Luke isn’t one of them, and she isn’t sure if she’s glad about that or not.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” the one holding the sword says.

“And yet, here I am,” she drawls.

The sword digs in harder against her jaw and a spark of pain comes soon after.

Thalia grins. “Parley?”

//

Percy helps hoist Annabeth from the rowboat to the ladder up to the deck of the _Interceptor_ . She isn’t sure who she’s expecting to see once she makes it up, but it’s more along the lines of Sloan and less what she _does_ see, which is a hodgepodge group of men with scraggly facial hair and dirty clothes. Percy hits the deck a moment after her, and she angles herself towards him and breathes, “more pirates?”

“Welcome aboard, Miss Chase,” a man with curly hair says, stepping forward. 

Annabeth blinks. “Mr. Underwood?” she asks incredulously.

He smiles at her but addresses Percy. “Where’s Thalia?”

Percy doesn’t meet his eyes and instead wraps a dry coat around Annabeth’s shoulders. 

“Thalia _Grace_?” Annabeth wishes anything made more sense.

“She fell behind,” Percy says, a hand on Annabeth’s back nudging her towards below deck. “There should be a dry change of clothes down there—I’ll help you find it.”

//

Castellan stares down at her, his face like stone. He has the upper ground, both literally and figuratively, but Thalia smiles up at him like the whole world’s her oyster.

She realizes that she never quite planned what she’d say to him, once she saw him again. What is there to say, when you’ve parted with blood and betrayal? She goes with, “hey, Luke.” Casual as can be. “Long time, huh?”

“How the fuck,” he starts, his voice low, “did you get off that island?”

“When you _marooned_ me on that spit of land, you forgot one very important thing, love,” she tells him. “I’m _Captain_ Thalia Grace.”

“Well.” He steps down from the chest and moves closer to her, almost within a sword’s distance, but not quite. She supposes he learned that lesson the hard way. “I won’t be making that mistake again.”

“Face’s healed up lovely,” Thalia remarks. “I think I prefer you this way.”

  
Thalia’s gotten kinder looks from British army officers. He takes his pistol out of his belt and levels it right between her eyes, but she doesn’t react. 

“The girl’s blood didn’t work, did it?”

Luke holds the pistol steady for a long moment and then sighs heavily, lowering it again. “You know whose blood we need.” It isn’t a question.

Thalia grins at him. “I know whose blood you need,” she confirms. 

//

Percy carefully wraps a piece of cloth around Annabeth’s hand, trying his best to be gentle. Her hair is drying slowly, a dull gold in the candlelight of the lower deck, and bunching up into curls around her cheeks and shoulders. He looks down at her hands to not get distracted, and as he does his eyes stray to the medallion on the table.

“I thought I’d lost it the day they rescued me. The day you rescued me,” Percy corrects. “You’ve had it all this time?”

Annabeth looks away. “It was your mom’s?”

“Yeah,” he breathes, reaching out to trace the design on the medallion with his thumb. “She put it around my neck and threw me overboard. The first thing I remember after that was you.” He clears his throat and goes back to dealing with her hand. “I heard Castellan say you gave him my name as yours. Why?”

Annabeth chews at the inside of her lip. “I don’t know,” she lies. 

“Come on, Annabeth,” Percy says. “I—can we not do this anymore? Please? I know it’s mostly my fault, and I’m sorry for that, I am, but please. Not anymore.”

She knows what he means: lying, or perhaps just avoiding telling the truth. He tugs a little harder than he intends as he knots the piece of cloth around her palm, and she winces.

“Sorry, sorry. Blacksmith hands. I know they’re rough.”

“No, it’s—I mean, yes, they are, but...” She takes a deep breath. “Percy, it wasn’t my blood they needed.”

“No?” He’s done, but he keeps his hand resting on top of hers.

“No. It was Sally Jack’s blood—your mother’s blood. _Your_ blood.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” he says.

Annabeth nods, biting her lip. She could give him the easy answer, about not wanting to reveal herself as the Governor’s daughter, but that’s an avoidance of the truth, and he just asked; he just said please. “All I wanted when my father and I got here was a family,” she admits. Percy’s eyebrows push together, but he stays quiet and listens; she’s thankful for that. “I was...missing my mother, frankly, although I never admitted it. It felt silly to miss someone I never really knew, I guess.”

Percy holds out his other hand, palm up. Annabeth takes it and finds security in its coarseness.

“And I got the family,” she continues, her lips twisting up into a bitter smile. “I got the step-mother and two brothers, but they weren’t _mine_ , not really. They never were,” she shrugs, “but that’s okay. I don’t mind.”

Although Percy was there then, and he knows that she very much _did_ mind, he doesn’t say that. Instead, he squeezes her uninjured hand and asks, “why don’t you? Mind, I mean.”

She looks up from their clasped palms to meet his gaze. “I did get a family, it just wasn’t them.” Her eyes are steel, a perfectly balanced blade throwing sparks into the fire.

“It was you.”

//

Luke Castellan leans back in his chair, kicking one foot onto the table in the captain’s quarters of the _Black Pearl_. “So,” he starts, “you expect to leave me standing on some beach with nothing but a name and your word it’s the name I need, and watch you sail away on my ship?”

“No,” Thalia responds, leaning one hip against the other side of the table, as far away as she can be from him. “I expect to leave you standing on some beach with absolutely no name at all, watching me sail away on _my_ ship, and _then_ I’ll shout the name back to you. Like the nobody-bloke and the cyclops. Savvy?”

Luke rubs at his temple, clenching his jaw tightly before speaking. “That still leaves me standing on a beach with only a name and your word it’s the one I need, Thalia.” 

The look she sends him can only be described as dangerous. “Of the two of us, I’m the only one who hasn’t committed mutiny, so my word is the one we’ll be trusting.” She pauses, tilting her head to the side. “Although, I guess I should be thanking you for that, because if you hadn’t betrayed me and left me to die then I’d have an equal share in that curse.” She picks up one of the apples on the table and takes a bite. “Funny world, isn't it?”

There’s a knock on the door, and the bosun peaks his head through. “Captain,” he addresses Luke, “we’re coming up on the _Interceptor_.” 

Luke leaps up and stalks out, and Thalia scrambles to follow. By the time she makes it out onto the deck and up the stairs to the bow, Luke already has a spyglass up and is studying the small ship on the horizon through it. She notices, smugly, that he now uses his right eye, not his left. Before he can bark out any orders, she steps in front of his spyglass.

“I’m having a thought here, Lukey-love,” she says, thinking quickly. “What if you raise a flag of truce and I were to scurry over to the _Interceptor_ to negotiate the return of your precious medallion? What about that?”

He shakes his head at her. “That’s exactly the attitude that lost you the _Pearl_ , Thalia. People are easy to search when they’re dead.” He looks over to the bosun. “Lock her in the brig,” he commands.

//

_It was you_. 

Percy swallows hard. “Do you know why I took the apprenticeship with Mr. D?” he asks.

Annabeth blinks, surprised at the change of subject. “No.”

“It was so I would be able to stay in Port Royal,” he says. “So I could stay with you.”

Her eyebrows pull together, her face incredulous. “Percy, we were twelve.”

“I know,” he tells her. Cautiously, his fingers shift from between her own to the inside of her wrist, the softest touch.“I knew.”

“Then?”

He shrugs. “It was like I was floating, back then. All the time, even when I was on solid ground, and you were like—it was like you were this tether, keeping me from drowning.” He blushes. “It was always the best part of my day, seeing you. You’re my best friend, Annabeth. You’re just...my person.”

It’s not Marlowe or Shakespeare, but it’s Percy and that’s all Annabeth wants; it’s all she’s wanted for years. She leans towards him, eyes momentarily flicking down to his mouth. He shifts closer, too, and just when she thinks they’re finally going to—

Something crashes above their heads and they spring apart. It’s only then that they become aware of the screaming and yelling happening on the weather deck. After a shared, panicked look, they race for the stairs. Annabeth still isn’t wearing shoes, the too-big men’s pants she has on tied up with a spare bit of rope, but she makes it up first.

The crew is dashing about and hollering various orders to each other, and it takes them almost a full minute to dodge around everyone and get to the helm. That’s where they find Grover, swearing and looking over his shoulder at the ship with black sails that’s appearing out of the fog behind them. “She’s gaining on us,” he says when they make it within hearing distance. 

“But this is the fastest ship in the Caribbean,” Percy protests.

“Evidently not,” Annabeth responds. She looks to the water ahead of them. “Grover, we’re shallower on the draft, right?” He nods and she points starboard. “We can lose them over those shoals.”

Percy raises a hand to his brow to block out the sun. “We don’t need to totally outrun them,” he realizes. “We just need to outrun them long enough.”

“Exactly.”

He turns and yells out over the well deck. “Lighten the load—everything we can afford to lose, throw it overboard!” When he mostly gets confused glances, he hurries down the stairs and starts giving individual instructions, and before long barrel after barrel are being tossed into the waves. The shoals grow ever closer, and Annabeth takes the wheel from Grover so that he can keep an eye on the _Black Pearl_ behind them. She’s beginning to get cocky, beginning to think that her plan is really working, when Grover curses loudly behind her.

“What?”

“They’ve run out their sweeps.”

“ _What_ ?” Annabeth whirls around, gesturing at him to switch places with her. She raises his spyglass, and sure enough the _Pearl_ now has oars protruding from the lower hull, hauling them closer and closer. “I didn’t know they had sweeps,” she mutters.

“Neither did I,” Grover says. “It was a good plan, but…”

“Annabeth!” It’s Percy, panting, with his shirt a bit torn and covered in what looks like gunpowder. He nearly trips on the last step up to the helm, but manages to stay on his feet. “Grover. We have to make a stand. It’s our only option now, and we’ve still got some cannonballs.”

“Not many,” Grover protests.

“Then we’ll load the guns with anything! Or everything—anything we have left.”

Grover looks over to Annabeth and then back to Percy again. He nods, and then she does, and Percy takes a deep breath before racing back down below. She shifts to take the wheel from Grover again, selfishly this time, so she can get a glimpse of Percy’s windswept black hair before he vanishes below deck.

“We might have another issue,” Grover says, grabbing her shoulder. “It looks like the _Pearl_ ’s going to luff up on our port quarter.”

It’s Annabeth’s turn to curse. “She’ll rake us without ever presenting a target.” She drums her nails along the slats of the wheel. “Lower the anchor on the right side.”

“What?”

“The starboard side! They won’t expect us to club haul.”

“Certainly has the element of surprise,” he agrees. “Why the hell not?” He takes a deep breath to yell, “lower the starboard anchor!”

Annabeth waits until the _Interceptor_ jerks, signalling that the anchor has finally found purchase on something in the sea, before she lets go of the wheel. The momentum of the ship swinging around sends her to the deck. She gets to her feet in time to see the _Pearl_ go hard to port, meaning they’ll soon be parallel in the water. “Ready to fire,” she yells.

The _Pearl_ gets closer and closer, until she can see the screaming faces of the pirates across the straight between the ships. Annabeth says nothing until the _Pearl_ enters the range of the last of the _Interceptor_ ’s cannons, and then screams, “fire all!”

After that there’s too many explosions to make much sense of anything. She grabs a musket and aims the best she can, knowing that her shots won’t do any good in killing any of the pirates across from her. 

“We could use another one of your ideas, Annabeth.” It’s Percy, panting and holding a pistol in each hand. He collapses next to her, crouched behind the taffrail, and briefly pops up to fire a few shots.

“Well, it’s your turn,” she snipes. “It’s not like they want _me_ anymore.”

“No,” Percy says slowly. “It’s not.”

She turns to him, reaching for her neck as she does. Her fingers hit her collarbone and close around nothing but air. 

“The medallion,” they say together. He hands her his pistols and makes for the hatchway, the fastest way to get to where they were talking earlier. Annabeth, now overloaded with guns, takes to shooting them in turns. The near-deafening booms from the cannons of both the _Interceptor_ and the _Pearl_ have become the norm, so the effects of one such chain shot don’t register until she hears the creaking of the mainmast above her. She looks up just in time to see it beginning to topple, and scrambles to get out of the way as it falls across the gap between the ships and onto the deck of the _Black Pearl_. 

If before they were relatively evenly matched in their fight, Annabeth can now feel the balance shift to heavily favor the _Pearl_ . The pirates fling grappling hooks across the water that catch in the _Interceptor_ ’s destroyed rigging, and Annabeth tries her best to shoot them as they swing across. The shock of being shot makes some of them loosen their grip and drop into the sea, and as they’re near unstoppable once they do board the _Interceptor_ , it’s their best chance of surviving the fight. 

She can’t shoot everyone who tries to cross, and is left to use her rifle as a blunt force instrument. Her knife comes in handy, too, but isn’t as effective in knocking people overboard. The crew of the _Interceptor_ is outnumbered, and Annabeth does her best to fight off two or three pirates at a time. She whirls around after hitting one solidly in the nose and finds a cutlass swinging down towards her neck. She doesn’t have time to parry the blow, but a hand reaches out and grabs onto the hilt to stop it. 

The hand is attached to a woman with dark hair that’s choppily cut short and incredibly bright blue eyes. “That isn’t very nice,” she says, and while the pirate is distracted Annabeth whacks him across the head with the butt of her rifle, sending him flying over the taffrail. The woman grabs Annabeth’s arm and drags her down, out of the path of loose bullets. “Where’s the medallion?” she asks.

“You’re Thalia Grace,” Annabeth says.

“Yes, and you’re our resident distressing damsel.” Thalia shakes her a bit. “The medallion.”

“I—Percy went to…” her voice trails off as she turns to look towards the hatch that leads below deck. Through the crowds of people fighting she sees that the mainmast has managed to fall directly across it. “Percy!” She rips herself out of Thalia’s grasp and runs, dodging around people as her feet slap against the deck.

The grate over the hatch is closed, the beam holding it down, and through the lattice of metal is Percy. His eyes go wide when they see her, his fingers coming up to hold onto the bars, and it’s then that Annabeth realizes that the water down below is up to his chest. 

“Annabeth,” he calls out.

“ _Percy_ .” She grabs onto the other side of the bars, their fingers touching for the tiniest of moments, before she goes try and push the beam off. She digs her toes into the grains of the deck and pushes with all her might, but it doesn’t budge. “I can’t move it,” she tells him, moving back so she can see his face again. The water’s up to his neck now, the ends of his hair wet and curling, and Annabeth can’t—she can’t _think_ —

“Annabeth,” he says. “Take this.” He squeezes the medallion between the metal and into her hand. “Annabeth, I—”

A pair of arms wrap around her waist and tear her away, backwards towards the _Pearl_. She thrashes, but another pirate comes to help the first, and she’s steadily forced farther and farther from her boy down below. 

“ _No_ ,” she screams. “No, _Percy!_ ”

But it’s no use. The crew don’t stand a chance, not against pirates who can’t be killed, and they’re all made to surrender eventually, their weapons confiscated as they’re rounded up on the weather deck of the _Pearl_ . The _Interceptor_ sinks slowly, a mess of its former self, but Annabeth never tears her eyes away, not even when Castellan holds a sword to her throat and tears the medallion out of her hand.

She’s frantically searching the water around the ship for a familiar head of black hair when the _Interceptor_ explodes. The heat of the blast hits her in a wave, but it’s the despair that knocks her back, really—the deafening and numbing anguish that melts right into her bones, bleaches them white-hot and furious. Her knife, left hidden in the folds of the too-big pants she has on, slips into her palm before she realizes it. This time, Annabeth doesn’t go for Castellan's wrist. 

No, this time she goes for his heart.

She doesn’t care if he won’t die, but maybe if she stabs hard enough—if she _means it_ enough—maybe he’ll feel it. The blade sinks into his chest all the way to the hilt, but he barely reacts. “You’ve taken advantage of our hospitality one too many times,” Castellan growls, pulling the knife out himself. It’s covered in blood, but Annabeth can see the wound in his chest heal up instantly through the hole in his shirt. “I won’t make that mistake again.” He presses the bloody knife to the outside of her neck, and Annabeth keeps her eyes open, staring straight and unafraid at his scar.

“Castellan!”

Annabeth jerks around, ignoring the sting of the slice that’s cut open on the side of her neck. Percy stands soaking wet on the taffrail, one hand tangled in the rigging and keeping him balanced and the other holding a pistol, pointed right at Castellan. “She goes free,” he demands.

Castellan gets his arm around her again, the knife still too close to her neck for comfort. “Who are you?” he asks.

Percy cocks the pistol and jumps down onto the deck, his hand steady. “She goes free,” he repeats.

“That pistol’s got one shot,” Castellan tells him, “and we can’t die.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Annabeth gasps out, hoping he’ll realize what she means.

Percy meets her eyes for a moment. The saturated relief that flooded through her system at the sight of him is steadily replaced with a terrible fear, because she knows exactly what he’s going to do next. “You can’t,” Percy agrees, looking back at Castellan, “but I can.” He raises the pistol to the underside of his own jaw. 

“I’ll ask again,” Castellan says, his voice deceptively calm, “who the fuck are you?”

“He’s no one,” Thalia interrupts from where she’s being held back by three pirates at the same time. She smiles, but it looks panicked—Annabeth doesn’t know how she’s such a famous pirate if she’s such a shit liar. “Distant cousin! On my father’s side, you know how it is.”

“My name’s Percy Jackson,” Percy practically yells. “Perseus Jackson. My mother was Sally Jack. Her blood runs in my veins.”

If Annabeth didn’t still have a knife by her throat, she’d spill some of his blood herself. He’s thrown any leverage he has overboard by showing all of his cards too soon, and now she has no plan in place to save him.

  
“Do as I say,” Percy commands, “or I’ll pull this trigger.”

Castellan’s arm drops; Annabeth steps away as quickly as she possibly can. “Name your terms, Mr. Jackson,” Castellan says.

“Annabeth goes free,” Percy responds instantly. Annabeth wants to club him over the head and drag him away, the self-sacrificing idiot.

“Yes, I’ve got that one. Anything else?”

Percy looks over to where Annabeth’s moved, in front of the surviving crew of the _Interceptor_. “The crew are not to be harmed.”

Castellan takes a step towards him and holds out a hand. “Agreed,” he says.

Cautiously, Percy steps forward as well, the pistol still held up to his head. He awkwardly switches it to his left hand so he can shake Castellan’s outstretched palm.

“The pistol then, Mr. Jack _son_.”

Percy looks over to Annabeth, an apology in his gaze, and hands the pistol over. Castellan grabs it by the barrel and slams the grip into Percy’s temple; he crumples to the deck.

//

“Castellan, you lying bastard!” Percy struggles against his restraints. “You swore she’d go free.”

Captain Castellan shrugs lazily. “I agreed she go free, but it was you who failed to specify when or where.” He waves a hand and a gag gets forced between Percy’s teeth. “Be glad I’m letting them off near an island.”

Annabeth, standing at the end of the plank, tears her eyes away from him. “I want my knife back,” she says to Castellan.

“I quite like this knife.” Castellan pulls it out of his belt and balances it on one finger. “I think I’ll keep it.” He slams his foot into the side of the plank that’s on the deck, and the vibrations make Annabeth lose her balance. 

She goes into the water with little to no grace, landing on her side. It’s the cold that shocks her more than anything else, a sharp contrast to the blazing sun and the sweat she’d worked up over the day, but she’s a good swimmer and makes it to the surface in no time. There isn’t a good view of the deck from where she comes up, so all she sees is an unknown figure with dark dive into the water a few yards away from herself. There’s a foolish little spark of hope that it might be Percy, that he might’ve fought his way through the pirates and overboard, but when the head comes above water again she sees it’s Thalia Grace herself.

“Oh, good,” Thalia remarks. “You can swim.”

“Of course I can swim,” Annabeth says, offended. 

“Well, how was I to know that?” She jerks her head towards the shore. “Come on, then.”

It’s an impossibly long swim. Annabeth stops a dozen times to float on her back and catch her breath again. She almost cries with relief when her toes manage to touch sand. Thalia’s not far ahead of her, and looks just as exhausted.

“That’s the second time I’ve had to watch that man sail away with my ship,” Thalia says, panting. She wipes a hand over her face, shaking the water away. When she makes it out of the waves she immediately shucks off her boots, tossing them farther up the beach and away from the tide. “At least I got a good slash in before he went, last time. This time I’ve just got a wet pistol and a damsel in distress.”

“You were marooned on this island before, weren’t you?” Annabeth asks, putting her hands on her knees and leaning over. She ignores the gibe about being in distress—in all fairness, she _is_ in distress. “We can escape the same way you did then.”

“For what purpose?” Thalia practically yells. “The _Black Pearl_ is gone! Unless you’ve got a rudder and sails hidden in your pants—” The water has made the slightly too large clothing stick to her skin, “—which is unlikely! Mr. Jackson will be dead long before you can reach him.” With that, she stalks up the beach and towards the few palm trees that are scattered around the one grassy area on the spit of sand they stand on. 

“But you’re Captain Thalia Grace,” Annabeth protests, following. “You vanished under the eyes of seven agents of the East India Company. You sacked Nassau Port without even firing a shot! Are you the pirate I’ve read about or not?”

Thalia doesn’t answer her, but she does stop abruptly on a patch of large, dried palm fronds. After jumping cautiously and then nodding to herself, she turns back to Annabeth and stares her down.

“How did you escape last time?” Annabeth asks, stepping closer.

Thalia looks away before looking back again. Her mouth opens and then closes with a resigned sigh. “Look, last time I was here for a grand total of three days, alright?” She nudges Annabeth back a step and then digs around in the sand at their feet. After a moment, she pulls up sharply, and the sand and dried leaves slide off of a large trap door. “The rumrunners used this island as a cache,” she explains, going down a few steps into the hidden cellar. “They came by and I was able to barter passage off. By the looks of things,” she grunts, holding up a few dusty bottles, “they’ve long been out of business.” She tosses bottle after bottle up onto the sand. “You probably have your bloody friends in the British Navy to thank for that.” She comes up the steps again, uncorks a bottle, and takes a long sip.

“So, that’s it then?” Annabeth asks, fury and despair fighting for dominance in her throat, her chest. “That’s the secret grand adventure of the infamous Thalia Grace? You spent three days lying on a beach, drinking rum?”

Thalia hands her a bottle. “Welcome to the Caribbean, love.”

Annabeth could be angry—Annabeth _is_ angry—but that won’t get her off this island. She stews over her bottle as Thalia goes about starting a fire, making and then scrapping escape plan after escape plan. It’s only once it begins to get dark and Thalia’s a few bottles of unintentionally aged rum in that the tension between them fades enough for something like smalltalk. 

“It’s about,” Thalia says, slurring just enough for Annabeth to notice, “going wherever you want! That’s what a ship _is,_ you know. It’s not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails—that’s what a ship _needs_ —but what a ship _is_ —what the _Black Pearl_ really is...is freedom.”

“Right.” Even to her own ears, Annabeth sounds unconvinced.

“Don’t you feel it?” Thalia asks her. “That burn to—to _matter_. To be utterly inignorable. Unignorable?” She shakes her head. “I don’t want to be ignored,” she declares loudly.

“To build something that’s yours,” Annabeth says softly. “Something permanent.”

Thalia snaps and points at her excitedly. “You _get_ it,” she exclaims. “Isn’t that what we all want, in the end? To be remembered?” She takes a long pull from her bottle. “To have glory and—and to be the best that ever was?”

“Not everyone,” Annabeth muses. 

“You don’t?”

“No, _I_ do,” she corrects, “but not everyone does.” Her voice does something Thalia doesn’t quite understand, becomes gentler, somehow. “Not Percy.”

Thalia rolls her eyes hard enough that her left eyelid twitches. “Well, lover boy’s the reason for the giant knot on my head, so forgive me for not being his biggest fan. What’s his angle? To idiotically bumble through life, mucking up my plans, get himself captured along the way?”

“He’s not an idiot,” Annabeth says sharply, “and he _did_ save us.”

Thalia raises her hands. “Fine, fine.” She reaches for her bottle again, tugging one sleeve over the _P_ branded onto her inner wrist. “Not that I care, mind you, but...what’s the story there?”

Annabeth raises an eyebrow. “Not that you care, huh?” She sighs and takes the bottle from Thalia’s hand, taking her own long sip. “He’s Percy,” she finally states, as if that explains everything. 

“Right,” Thalia echoes Annabeth’s earlier comment and intonation, drawing out the vowel.

“He’s _good_.” Annabeth bites her lip. “He’s selfless and funny and just—he’s my person.” She picks her next words carefully, slowly: “I don’t have many things that are mine, but he has always been—” She clears her throat and nods decisively. “He’s mine.”

“Huh,” Thalia muses. “Maybe I was wrong about who was the thief and who was the treasure.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Thalia pulls the cork out of a new bottle of rum with her teeth. “How does father dearest feel about all that?”

“I don’t care what my father thinks.” Annabeth drains her bottle. “When we get back, he’ll see. I’ll make him see, or we’ll leave.”

“Oh, getting back’s that easy, eh?”

“I’m going to save him,” Annabeth insists.

“Annabeth.”

“You don’t know me.” Annabeth tosses the now empty bottle a few feet away and motions for Thalia’s fresh one. “I’m just as good as Percy with a sword. Better, honestly; he could never beat me twice in a row. I’ll find him and bring him home.”

As gently as she can manage, Thalia says, “I’m not sure that’s possible, at this point.”

In the bouncing light on the fire, Annabeth’s eyes look like molten steel. “Then I will make it possible,” she growls.

“I—” Thalia sighs. “We should get some sleep.”

Annabeth nods sharply. “Fine.”

Thalia lays back in the sand and closes her eyes; within minutes, she’s snoring.

Annabeth gets up and gets to work.

//

Thalia wakes up to the smell of smoke. Her head is pounding, but in all honesty there’s nothing new about that, so she focuses on the smell of smoke. When she stumbles to her feet, the source of the smoke is clear—Annabeth is throwing the few barrels left into a giant bonfire that looks like it’s mostly composed of the rumrunner’s cache. It’s a massive enough fire that the palm trees have caught as well, but she keeps throwing bottles and barrels onto it.

“What are you _doing_ ?” Thalia yells, getting as close as she can before the heat becomes unbearable. “You’ve burned all the food, the shade, the _rum_.”

“That signal,” Annabeth says, pointing to the plume of smoke, “is over a thousand feet high. The entire Royal Navy is out looking for me. Do you really think that there’s even the slightest chance that they won’t see it? Give it an hour, maybe two, and there will be white sails on that horizon.”

“Are you _insane_ ?” Thalia seethes. “Do you know what happens to people who have _this_ ,” she pulls up a sleeve so that the scarred letter _P_ is visible, “branded onto them? They get hanged, Annabeth. _Hanged_.”

“I’m going to tell them that you saved me, obviously,” she says. “There’s no need to be dramatic.” She starts walking around to the other side of the fire to see the horizon to the east. 

“I'm not being dramatic,” Thalia protests, following her. “Out of the two of us, _I’m_ the one who knows how the Royal Navy treats pirates, not you! Who’s to say that they’re even still looking for—”

Annabeth stops abruptly and Thalia runs into her back. In the distance, but close enough to see the flag of the British Empire, is a large ship with white sails. She immediately recognizes it as the _Dauntless_.

Thalia sighs. “Oh, fuck.”

//

“But we have to go after Percy,” Annabeth insists.

“No.” Her father puts two heavy hands on her shoulders. “You’re safe now. We will return to Port Royal immediately and _not_ go...gallivanting after pirates! Your mother and brothers have been alone for far too long already.”

Annabeth shrugs him off. “Then we condemn him to death.”

“The boy’s fate is regrettable,” Governor Chase says, “but then, so was his decision to engage in piracy.”

“To rescue _me_ ,” Annabeth tries to explain. “To prevent anything from happening to me. Which he did!”

“If I may be so bold as to interject my professional opinion,” Thalia pipes up from the side, where she’s currently being held in chains, “the _Pearl_ was listing near to scuppers after the battle and it’s very unlikely it’ll make good time.” She smiles that too-innocent smile of hers and directs her next words to Sloan, standing just behind Governor Chase’s elbow. “Think about it. The _Black Pearl_. How can you pass up capturing the last real pirate threat in the Caribbean?”

“By remembering that I serve others, Miss Grace, and not only myself.”

Thalia makes a face at being called a _miss_ , but Annabeth doesn’t see it. She’s too busy weighing her fate against Percy’s. Before she’s even realized it, Annabeth has made a terrible choice.

“Matthew,” she gasps out, ducking under her father’s arm and stepping close to Sloan’s chest. “I—I need you to do this. For me. As a…” She swallows. “As a wedding present.”

Sloan’s eyes go wide. The officers milling around them, and Annabeth’s father, all suck in a surprised breath. Annabeth waits.

“Miss Grace,” Sloan says, “you will accompany my men to the helm and provide the bearings to _Isla de Muerta_. You will then spend the rest of the voyage contemplating all possible meanings of the phrase ‘silent as the grave.’ Do I make myself clear?”

Thalia presses her palms together and nods. “Inescapably clear.” As she’s led away, her eyes stray to make contact with Annabeth’s, a terrible understanding in her gaze. She’s the one in irons, but Annabeth feels them around her own wrists just the same.

//

Percy is kept in a different part of the ship than the rest of the rag-tag crew from Tortuga. He worries, but Thalia’s gotten herself off that island before, so he tries to convince himself that everything is fine. 

It doesn’t work so well, not when he’s left with his own thoughts for hours. The sight of a few members of the _Pearl_ ’s crew is more than welcome, even if they’ve only come down to mop the deck outside of his little cell. The silence between them and the wet slap of the mop is unbearable; finally, he breaks.

“You knew my mother,” he starts.

The pirate looks up from his mop. “I knew old Jack,” he says without further prompting. “Never sat well with her, what we did to Captain Grace—the mutiny, and all. She said it wasn’t right with the code. That’s why she snuck away with a piece of the treasure, tried to outrun us. She said we deserved to be cursed...and _remain_ cursed. The gold was gone when we caught her; she must’ve given it to you, and that didn’t sit too well with the captain. No, that didn’t sit too well with him at all.” He stops mopping to lean closer to the bars of Percy’s cell. “He strapped her to a cannon, he did, and the last we saw of ol’ Sally Jack she was sinkin’ down into the crushing oblivion of Davy Jones’ locker.”

Percy’s nails dig into the meat of his palms so harshly that they draw blood. He doesn’t notice.

“Of course,” the pirate says, leaning on his mop, “it was only _after_ that we learned that we needed her blood to lift the curse. Irony, that is.”

All Percy can think of is the curse. If they can’t die—if his mother was one of the pirates who took the cursed gold, and none of them can die—that means she’s still alive, down there, under the waves. She’s alive and unable to die. Somehow it’s even worse than knowing that she’s dead.

//

Annabeth closes her eyes and takes in a deep breath of salty air so huge that it makes her lungs ache. The taffrail digs into her hips but she just leans into the hurt harder, the cut on her palm pressed harshly into the wood.

She breathes again and feels the pain and wonders _what do I want?_

What does she _want?_

The wind blows her hair into her face and then out of it again, wild and untamable. Annabeth opens her eyes and sees blue. 

_That_ , she thinks. _That is what I want_. 

She wants blue.

The horizon stretches in front of her, unending and world shatteringly permanent. Annabeth wants so badly she thinks her chest might cave in; she wants the callouses and the aching muscles and the salt and the infinity and to be utterly unforgettable. She wants the brush of a scabbard against her leg and the weight of a pistol at her hip. 

Annabeth wants to _be._

Annabeth wants—

Her mind drifts to rough hands and green eyes. She’s hit with the unique fury that is wanting something that should already be hers, some _one_ that should already be hers. 

She wants it all. 

Annabeth stares into the ocean and can feel the beginnings of a plan start to stitch together in her head, as inevitable as the next beat of her heart. 

//

Percy has no concept of how long he’s been in the belly of the _Black Pearl._ Hunger gnaws at his stomach like a dog with a bone, until it’s all he can really think about. He’d been given a cup of some kind of beer some amount of time ago, and the stench of it lingers on his breath.

He thinks about his mom. He thinks about her warm laugh and how she used to run her fingers through his hair when she talked to him. He’d never really asked that many questions, in his childhood; she would leave him with a friend or at a boarding house whenever their purse was too light and then return for him a few weeks later, usually with some kind of sweets in her hand for him. Then they’d be together again for however long she could manage—it was just the way things worked. Her last trip away hadn’t seemed any different, really. She’d returned to him a little later than usual, maybe, and they’d been off to Port Nassau when the attack happened. 

Things get blurry around there. He’d wanted to fight, that he remembers clearly, but she’d pulled him away. The medallion was put around his neck and she’d kissed his forehead. That was the last look he’d really gotten of her, of warm brown eyes and laugh lines. Then he’d been shoved overboard and into the sea. 

Warm brown eyes. Laugh lines. Condemned to an eternity at the bottom of the ocean.

Percy can’t remember her face, anymore. He’s trying to when Castellan shows up outside his cell. He hands a ring of keys to one of the pirates to his side. “Bring him,” he says.

//

Sloan frowns at Thalia, a particularly ugly expression on his already ugly face. “I don’t like it,” Sloan says. “There’s too many opportunities for an ambush.”

“That’s why _you_ should be doing the ambushing,” Thalia tells him. She glances over at Annabeth, who’s in the room mostly because it’s the only deemed fancy enough for a _lady,_ but also because her father hasn’t wanted her out of sight. “Listen, I can go in, convince Castellan to send his men out with their little boats. You and your lovely men can blast the shit out of them with the _Dauntless’_ mighty canons. What do you have to lose?”

“Nothing I’d cry about being rid of,” Sloan mutters, scratching at his chin.

“But the pirates,” Annabeth finally interrupts, “you won’t be able to beat them.”

Everyone standing in the captain’s quarters swing around to look at her. Annabeth’s the only one looking at Thalia when she mouths a single, little word: _freedom_.

What does she _want?_

“I—nevermind.” She looks down at her lap, her fingers twisting in the fabric of her better fitting, stark white pants of the Royal Navy.

The decision to let Thalia go into the fray herself is quickly agreed upon, and the majority of the room clears out to go ready a rowboat and get back to work. Annabeth’s father leaves her with a kiss on the head and the suggestion that she get some rest. Somehow, Thalia’s the last to file out of the captain’s quarters, and she takes a tiny detour to be able to stand by Annabeth’s side for a brief moment.

“Don’t know if you noticed,” she mumbles, “the rowboat that’s stationed on the stern.” She’s gone a second later, the doors shut firmly behind her.

Annabeth’s left alone, and if she judges correctly by the outline she can see through the frosted glass door, there’s a guard stationed outside the door. 

A rowboat on the stern of the _Dauntless?_ Annabeth runs a hand through her hair, wincing as it immediately gets caught on one of the innumerable knots. It doesn’t make sense to have a rowboat stationed there unless someone wants to make an escape off the back of the boat.

Annabeth resists the urge to slap her hand to her forehead. The back of the boat, where the captain’s quarters are located—where _she’s currently sitting_. Smiling, she gets up and rushes over to the windows.

Thalia’s a curious woman. Annabeth thinks they might end up friends.

//

“Begun by blood,” Castellan booms, standing once again by the stone chest. He’s got one hand in Percy’s hair, yanking his head back, and one hand holding a knife. “By blood un...done…”

Thalia waves up at him from where she’s pushed her way to the front of the crowd.

“Thalia,” Percy breathes out.

“It’s not possible,” Castellan says.

“Not _probable_ ,” Thalia corrects.

“Where’s Annabeth?”

“Oh, don’t get your knickers in a twist, loverboy. She’s safe, just like I promised, and she’s all set to marry Sloan, just like _she_ promised, and you get to die for her, just like _you_ promised. So, we’re all men of our word really, except for me and Annabeth, who are, in fact, women.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Castellan roars. “You’re next.” He twists the hand in Percy’s hair, yanking his head even farther back, and holds the knife to Percy’s neck. “No mistakes this time,” he growls. “You’re only half Jack—we’ll spill it all.”

“You don’t want to be doing that, love,” Thalia pipes up. 

Castellan doesn’t move. “I really think I do.”

Thalia shrugs. “Your funeral.”

The silence stretches, and finally Castellan groans and takes the knife away from Percy’s neck. “Why don’t I want to be doing this?” he asks through clenched teeth. 

“Because the _HMS Dauntless_ , pride of the Royal Navy, is floating just offshore, waiting for you,” Thalia tells him. “Would be inconvenient if you were suddenly mortal again for that battle, wouldn’t it?”

Castellan finally takes his fingers out of Percy’s hair. Percy leans away, wincing and unable to rub at his head as his hands are still tied behind his back. 

“Just hear me out, Lukey-love,” Thalia says, picking up a golden chalice and examining it as she speaks. “You order your men to row out to the _Dauntless_ . They do what they do best, Bob’s your uncle, Fanny's your aunt, there you are with two ships. The makings of your very own fleet. ‘Course, you’ll take the grandest as your flagship, and who’s to argue? Not me! But what of the _Pearl?_ Name me Captain, and I’ll sail under your colors. I’ll give you ten percent of my plunder and you get to introduce yourself as _Commodore_ Castellan.”

“And I suppose,” Castellan says, wary, “that in exchange you’ll want me not to kill the whelp.” He jerks a head towards Percy.

“Oh, no,” Thalia shrugs, “by all means, kill the whelp; just not yet. Wait to lift the curse until,” her gaze slides to the side until it meets Percy’s, “the _opportune moment._ For example, after you’ve killed the Crown’s lovely men.”

Percy blinks. That phrase—Thalia’s said it to him before, right before he’d knocked her out. His mind’s still reeling from hearing _she’s set to marry Sloan,_ but in all honesty he’d much prefer to trust Thalia than to trust Castellan. He thrashes against his bonds, mostly for the dramatic effect. “You’ve been planning this from the beginning, ever since you learned my name,” he accuses. He’s not a bad liar, but his ruse is helped by the fact that Thalia’s either a _flawless_ liar or truly is playing him.

“Yes,” she says plainly, turning back to Castellan. “So?”

“I want fifty percent of the plunder,” Castellan demands.

“Fifteen.”

“Forty.”

“Twenty-five, and I’ll buy you a really big hat.” She leans forward. “ _Commodore_.”

  
Castellan mulls that over for a long moment. Eventually, he nods and holds a hand out. “We have a deal.”

They shake on it. Percy thinks he’s the only one who sees Thalia wipe her hand on her pants afterwards.

“Gents,” Castellan tells the pirates milling about in the cave, who have all been clearly eavesdropping, “take a walk.”

“Not to the boats?” Thalia asks.

“No need for boats when you want the element of surprise and can’t drown,” Castellan says, sitting with his back to the stone chest.

Thalia swallows hard. “Ah.”

“You can take a seat if you want. This probably won’t be long, though.”

//

Governor Chase waves away the guard by the door of the captain’s quarters. “Annabeth?” he calls out. There isn’t a response, but he continues anyway, used to her sullen silences.

“I just want you to know, I believe you made a very good decision today. Couldn’t be more proud of you.” He clears his throat. “But, you know, even a good decision, if made for the wrong reasons, can be a wrong decision.” He waits again, but there’s just more silence.

“Annabeth? Are you even listening to me?” He finally opens the door.

The window is open, a train of tied together curtains leading out of it. He runs over and sticks his head out into the night air. The stern rowboat is gone.

“Oh, Annabeth,” he sighs. “What have you done?”

//

“I have to admit,” Luke says casually, spinning a knife around between his fingers, “I thought I had you figured, Thals. Turns out you’re a hard woman to predict.”

“Me, I’m dishonest.” She sees a flash of blonde in the corner of her eye. “ And a dishonest woman you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly, it’s the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they’re going to do something incredibly stupid.”

With that, she kicks Luke as hard as she can across the face, sending him tumbling down the pile of gold and onto the cave floor. In the few spare moments it’s granted her, she cuts the bonds off of Percy. The two pirates who had stayed behind with Luke rush towards them. “Behind you,” she warns Percy, turning around just in time to parry the blow Luke is bringing down at her head.

The hilts of their swords lock, both of them straining to get the upper hand. “You’re off the edge of the map, love,” Luke says, his breath hot on her face. “Here there be monsters.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she grunts back. “You’re just a man.” She manages to push him away with enough force to run back down to the cave floor, away from the chest. When he chases after her, she sidesteps his attack and manages to get a solid stab into his shoulder.

Luke doesn’t even react. “You can’t beat me, Thalia,” he says. 

She pulls the sword out again just in time to parry and repost his next blow. “I don’t need to beat you,” she pants. 

It’s a mistake, because it’s that phrase that makes him pause and whirl around to see Percy and Annabeth fighting the other two pirates and slowly making their way back towards the chest. The medallion still hangs around Percy’s neck.

Luke curses loudly, sprinting over to them from where Thalia has lured him away. She takes off after him and tackles him to the ground before he can reach them. 

They hit the cave floor hard, Thalia on Luke’s back, and grapple with each other. Luke is stronger but she’s smarter, and it buys her just enough time. With one arm wrapped around Luke’s neck and his hands yanking at her hair and pulling at her hip, she sees Percy cut into his arm and smear the medallion against it. It seems to fall into the chest in slow motion.

Luke gasps under her, a wet and ugly sound. The two pirates that Annabeth was fighting off both collapse holding different parts of their bodies. Thalia feels something wet under her; when she scrambles back, she sees the place she had stabbed Luke in the shoulder a few moments ago oozing blood onto the cave floor. “Thalia,” he grunts.

Thalia shakily gets to her feet and turns away from him.

Ahead of her, Annabeth has her arms wrapped around Percy, hugging him so tightly he looks a bit uncomfortable. He doesn’t move, though, and brings his own arms up around her shoulders.

“Hey,” Thalia calls out. “D’you think you two can—”

The shot of a pistol echoes off the walls of the cave.

//

“ _Thalia_ ,” Annabeth screams.

Thalia stands still for a moment, her eyes wide. She takes a halting step forward, then tries to take another; her knee buckles and shit hits the floor. Once she falls, Annabeth can see Castellan a few feet behind her, still on the ground but holding Thalia’s pistol. He stares at them briefly and then goes limp, his head hitting the rocks with a thud.

Annabeth rushes down the pile of gold to get to Thalia’s side. She turns her over gently and feels bile rise in her throat at the state of Thalia’s abdomen, a mess of blood and guts. Percy lands beside her a second later, cursing softly at the sight before them.

“Thalia,” he says. “I—”

“Captain Grace,” she grunts. “I’m...Captain…” Her head lolls back in Annabeth’s grip. She exhales deeply and doesn’t breathe in again.

Annabeth carefully lowers her skull back down to the ground. “Is he dead?” she asks.

Percy looks over to Castellan. “Looks like it,” he says. “He’ll bleed out soon if he isn’t.”

“Is this it?” She turns to him, blood on her hands, streaked against her white pants. “I don’t—this isn’t…”

He pulls her into a hug, his spine twisted around uncomfortably. She breathes shakily into his shoulder; his hand tries to run through her hair and gets caught on the knots. _This isn't the way that stories end_ , she doesn't say. _This isn't what I had planned._

“We should get back to the _Dauntless_ ,” Annabeth says, pulling away from him. She can’t bear staying here another moment.

Percy smiles at her. It’s a wisp of a thing and doesn’t reach his eyes. “Your fiance will be wanting to know you’re safe,” he says.

//

Annabeth finds him at the bow of the weather deck, leaning over the edge and gazing into the water. He turns when he hears her footsteps and smiles, but it's too weak to fool her. “Hi,” he says.

“My dad says he saw the _Pearl_ sailing away while we were still in the cave,” she says. “They couldn’t abandon me to go after it, I guess. Means Grover has his own ship now.”

“That’s good. He deserves it.” Percy looks up at the stars. “The crew of the _Pearl_ must have drowned, huh?”

“I’m not too torn up about it,” Annabet admits.

Percy laughs lightly. “No, I didn’t think you’d be.”

“I never taught you the constellations, did I?” It’s a question, but Annabeth knows the answer already.

“No,” Percy says. “I was never allowed to stay past dark. My mom taught me a few, but...” He shrugs. “That was a long time ago.”

Annabeth hums in response. The moon is nearly full and bright enough that she can see the awe spread across his face as he looks up. Percy so rarely talks about his mother, and she never quite knows the right thing to say when he does. “Can I show you my favorite?” she asks.

He looks over at her. “Of course,” he responds. 

Annabeth steps closer, tentatively at first and then with more confidence when he doesn’t move away. She tucks her back against his chest so that his gaze can follow the line of her arm as she points. It makes him suck in a surprised breath, but he stays where he is, steady against the rocking of the ship. Annabeth moves her finger slowly, tracing the invisible string between the stars that she knows so well. “It’s shaped a bit like a _Y_ , see,” she says. A part of her, buried deep next to pains that feel as old as the world, rails against this intimacy, this _vulnerability,_ but she ignores it. The smell of the ocean inflates her lungs and she ignores it.

“Yeah,” Percy mumbles. His breath is hot against her ear. “I see it. What’s it called?”

She turns her head. Their noses brush; her world is green. “Perseus,” she whispers.

The moment stretches. It’s like he’s got some kind of gravitational pull, drawing her in. She wants to be drawn in.

He takes a step back. “Sorry,” he says. “It’s a nice constellation. Thank you for showing me.”

“Percy.”

“We should go to bed.” He jerks his head towards the deckhands milling about. “Don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.”

_It’s not wrong,_ part of her screams. _It’s right._ “What are you going to do when we get back?” she asks. It’s not the right question, but it’s the one she asks.

“Back to work for Mr. D, I suppose,” he says. 

It makes her chest ache, the thought of him bending over a fire. It seems so incredibly wrong now that she knows what he looks like with a sea breeze fluffing up his hair. “Will that make you happy?”

He shrugs, looking down. “Does it matter?”

“ _Yes,_ ” Annabeth insists, “it matters. Of course it matters.” She sighs. “Will Port Royal ever make you happy?”

“It could,” he says feebly.

“But it won’t,” she finishes. “That’s what I thought.” Annabeth takes a moment to steel herself and then charges onward. “If Port Royal doesn’t make you happy then you shouldn’t stay there, Percy. You should go.”

He takes a step away from her, his eyes wide and hurt. “What?”

Annabeth gestures around them. “Isn’t this what makes you happy?” 

“I—there are other things that make me happy, Annabeth.”

“Things you can find in Port Royal?”

He looks at her, long and hard. She never understood why people called his eyes unsettling before, but now it’s clear. “I guess not,” he says. When she doesn’t respond, he walks past her and down to the berth.

Annabeth stays above for a long time, looking up at the stars. She measures what she wants against what is fair and isn’t sure she’s done the equation right.

//

They return to Port Royal; Percy is given his pardon and a large reward. 

Annabeth is stuffed in a carriage and taken up to the Governor’s mansion; she doesn’t wonder why she can no longer call it home.

//

“Annabeth!”

The voice comes from the people gathered below, and Annabeth’s head snaps towards it. Percy makes his way through the crowd until she can see all of him, new outfit and all. It suits him, the swashbuckle-ly look, even though Annabeth can hear the outraged sniffs from the officers standing near her. The ceremony, long and boring, continues to take place on top of the ramparts. The world where he had insisted on calling her _Miss Chase_ seems so incredibly far away.

“Percy,” she says, just loud enough for him to hear. “What are you…” she lets it trail off, still looking over Percy’s face and the way it seems to shine just because of who he’s looking at.

“Do you have a moment?” he asks, grinning.

Annabeth is suddenly overwhelmed with how much the stuffy officers to her left and right bore her, with how this whole life she’s trying to get used to again has been boring her, completely and utterly, in a way she hasn’t been able to ignore since she got back.

Percy jerks his head towards the edge of the battlements, and Annabeth slips away from her spot as subtly as possible, smirking at the disapproving look from her father. The sun is bright, the glare off the water making it seem brighter, but Percy’s smile as he waits for Annabeth to approach is brighter than both combined.

“I thought you left this morning,” she says.

“Never,” he breathes. “I could never.”

“Never what?”

“Never leave you.”

“Percy,” she sighs. “You can’t be happy here.”

“Can _you_?”

That shuts her up. 

“I heard that you aren’t marrying the Commodore.”

“No,” she says softly, looking out over the port. “I’m not. I couldn’t.” She doesn’t mention the conversations with her father, or her step-mother, or the Commodore himself. There are worse things than a promise she doesn't regret breaking.

“Why not?”

She raises an eyebrow. He blushes.

“I think I…” he swallows. “I think I was trying to convince myself you’d be happier here, if things went back to how they used to be.” He nods at her incredulous look. “I know, I know. I was lying to myself; I don’t know why. But I think, if I stayed—” he clears his throat, “—I think _we_ could be…I think…”

Annabeth hasn’t ever been so good at waiting for things that she wants, things that are hers, but Percy’s cheeks are tinged pink and she can’t resist. “Is there something you wanted?”

“ _Annabeth_.”

She puts him out of his misery. It’s so very easy to grab Percy by the lapels of his expensive new outfit and pull him into a kiss. It’s easy, even natural. It feels like they’ve somehow done it before. The breeze is strong this far up, and it carries with it the sharp smell of salt water. Annabeth can almost taste it.

Percy’s hand comes up to rest against her cheek, calloused and warm. When they part, his grin is lopsided, rougeish. 

“You look like a pirate,” she breathes.

“Takes one to know one,” Percy shoots back.

“Are you going to say it?”

“Are you?”

Annabeth steps on his foot. Laughing even as he winces, Percy kisses her again. “I love you,” he whispers against her mouth.

Annabeth longs for the rock of a ship beneath her feet. Percy looks at her and echoes the words that resonate deep in her bones and she feels just as rocked, even as she’s standing on solid stone.

//

In a cave on an island that can’t be found except by those who already know where it is, Luke Castellan struggles to his feet. 

..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tell me what u think! EYE think percy and annabeth ruin my life on the regular!

**Author's Note:**

> why did i control alt delete poseidon? his ho ass never paid child support ! not in MY story. bitch


End file.
